#leyelle

Never underestimate the power of ugliness.

Uglying up your prose can be just as powerful as prettying it up.

Using words like bleeding, vomiting, to describe basic actions like water running out of a faucet can add a sense of violence or agony to a scene:

"Plunging his hands into the ice cold water vomiting from the sink..."

"Plunging his hands into the ice cold water bleeding from the sink..."

Using very ugly imagery to describe normal things can also work well in tandem with using prettied up (especially when it's exaggeratedly so) imagery for ugly things.

The best cure for writers' block I've found is to keep writing even when you have no inspiration. Push through the garbage, and you'll often find that ideas start coming to you, but if you insist you're uninspired, you will be. This is part of the reason why it's so great to write to prompts. Game-fying the struggle gets you out of your head a bit.

Go for a walk and tell yourself you have to pick one random thing to write about. Open the dictionary, select a word off the page you opened to and try to do something with that. As Isaac Asimov said, sometimes doing something mindless like watching a movie helps.

Basically the more stimuli you surround yourself with, the more likely you are to find inspiration. You can generate that stimuli yourself just by yeeting words onto a page - you 100% can inspire yourself.

And remember that nobody ever said you have to keep the draft. If it's garbage, it's not like you suddenly destroyed your story idea for good - it's been poisoned by one bad draft and is dying of failure-itis.

Occasionally, I'll play an emotional song when writing a really emotional chapter of my novel "Damsel in the Red Dress." I find getting into this almost "cinematic" mindset can help me channel more emotion into the scene. While it's certainly not the only way you can 'make yourself emotional' to bring more life to the scene, I think it's a pretty effective one.

I have two ongoing novels releasing serialized updates.

One is a disability romance novel called "Damsel in the Red Dress" available here on Wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/365913868-damsel-in-the-red-dress

Confluence means a flowing or coming together, gathering or meeting at one point.

If you write anything to this prompt, please do share it on your social medias with the #leyelleprompt and be sure to tag me. I'd love to see your work. (or just share it in the comments here.)

I know he’s not interested in talking, but turning the radio on would still feel like telling him to shut up.

I could think of a thousand things to say if left to my own devices - but my body has felt like one big system error for the last five years. 

I have a thousand things I want to say and I don’t feel like saying any of them, staring at the back of his curly head as he studies his scrawny arm resting on the windowsill, with something like stubborn pride that unsettles me.

“How do you calculate the length of the hypotenuse?” I blurt brusquely, like it’s a dare.

“I don’t need you to quiz me, Lady Licorice,” He doesn’t turn his gaze from his arm, rolling down his sleeve until it hides his bloodless hands.

“Excuse me for trying to keep you out of summer school,” I sniff with more than genuine vehemence. “Remind me who got a ‘D’ on their last test?”

“I didn’t study for that one. I studied for this one,” he says in an exasperated monotone, crossing his arms over his chest - leaning forward against the seat belt like he’s a ragdoll just barely being kept upright.

I purse my lips at that, but he can’t see me, my eyebrows furrowing into a migraine. I try to push it back with one hand, keeping the other on the steering wheel.

I shouldn’t have left without my coffee this morning…

“So what’s this ‘plan?’”

“Don’t want to go into it.”

I can barely feel my numb fingers resting on the faux leather wheel cover - watching the red light grow from a speck and bleed into color. I shift - reminding myself of the feeling of cotton on my skin. Weight. That I can feel my hair on my neck. If I stop to think about it.

“I thought we said we were going to tell each other what was going on?”

He looks over at me slowly as I stare at him, my jaw set, and his eyes dare me back.

“Is Kevin still texting you?”

“Not enough to be jealous of.”

I manage to keep my uncomfortable heartbeat from showing - but I feel cold on the outside - wondering if the only reason my heart isn’t pounding against my ribs is because it’s shrinking.

Riley glares at me rancorously.

“What did he say?”

Shifting uncomfortably against my seat belt as the car pauses at the street corner, I wriggle my phone from my jean’s pocket and toss it onto his lap with as much un-phase-ed-ness as I can muster, and turn the radio up to a murmur to drown out this feeling under my skin.

“An albino- a mosquito-!”

Riley scrolls back and forth between the two most recent texts as I glance over his shoulder.

That’s what you said last year, Kevin.

Sorry, Lei. I know. I’ve been dying to come see you again but I’ve got no time. My mom’s been on my back about grades all year like a drill sergeant because of graduation. But maybe this summer if she doesn’t make me go with her to visit her family again.

Riley looks at me in abject indignation. I just shrug a little.

“Don’t tell me you’re buying this.”

“I’m not buying anything,” I say a little too shortly, defensively. “I just let him talk. If he comes he comes. If he doesn't, who cares?

Riley looks like there’s something else he wants to say to that, but he just puts the phone on the dashboard to sunbathe in the little light eking its way through the foggy morning haze and lifts his ghost-like hand to his mouth to check his sour breath.

A thousand thoughts spiral in my brain. Shake themselves up and rearrange into new phrases - nonsense and blabber - like a bag of scrabble pieces - but-

“You smell like barf.”

-Is what comes out.

He just scowls at me, but I scowl back, bitterly.

The late November chill sits palpably thick in the car like we’re bathing in evaporated ice water. On other days I would fret the gooseflesh on my shoulders something awful, silently bemoaning the seconds it takes Kattar to slide into the driver’s seat and close his door, but I told myself I wouldn’t let anything ruin today. I still might ask him for his jacket, and if I do, I’d better do it sooner than later, cuz I know he’ll never relinquish anything without teasing me for an hour and a half first. We’ll either be frozen or back at the hotel, by then. 

I study the parked cars outside my window, dip-dyed in darkness that seems to lob them in half beneath the shadow of the overhangs. The yellow lights in the garage are few and far between, casting a dangerously sleepy hue over everything. I feel so sluggish, it grates on me - wishing I was exploding with energy - feeling as excited as I know I should be right now. 

Today was the happiest day of my life, in a dull sort of way. Perfect in muted color.

Kattar finally closes his door and turns the car, and the heat, on. I can tell by his posture that he’s laughing on the inside. I can almost feel him fizzing beneath the surface as he turns in my direction and smirks, “So… how’s it feel? What’s it like being Ms. Van Gogh?”

“That’s not what they call the award,” I reply, sighing just because I know it amuses him to annoy me, “This isn’t a beauty pageant…” Then I think about it.