The air of one morning
Don't stop · 15 minutes · Published
Read this first
How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”--was that it?--“I prefer men to cauliflowers”--was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace--Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished--how strange it was!--a few sayings like this about cabbages.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Project Gutenberg #71865
The prompt
Set a timer, start from the air of one morning you remember, and keep the hand moving until it stops: let each thing you see call up the next, a window, a smell, a remark someone made that you can no longer place exactly. Do not go back to fix a name or a date; write that you are not sure and keep going. When the timer stops, underline one sentence and read nothing else.
Set a timer for 15 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
Ten minutes, timer on, from the air of one morning you remember, no going back, no fixing.
The move
Don't stop. Write for a set time without rereading or correcting, the hand always moving.
Tags: voice and memory.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Only what works. Anyone reads who wants to. In this format, responses name only what works in the first draft, and every text is treated as fiction.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.