The Place For My Writers Notes

The pad by my bed says, "alien waiting room."

I keep a pad and pen by the bed just in case one of the thoughts that I stumble over while drifting between sleep and waking seems likely to be useful. I don't dream very much, or at least I don't remember my dreams very much, but occasionally something will come to mind in that half asleep half awake transition and seem like it should be useful. I've learned to scribble down a few words, and can usually figure out what they are later.

Last night, I realized that sometime this week I had scribbled something down. So I stopped to read it. "Alien waiting room." Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to resurrect the line of thought behind it. An alien in a waiting room? A waiting room in an alien society? Or is the waiting room alien itself? As an SF fan, I tend to think of alien as nonhuman, but it could be the simple foreigner -- an alien to the shore?

In any case, let's use it in a slightly expanded form as a prompt for writing. So, here is your one line starter.

She looked up and said, "There's an alien in the waiting room."

Feel free to give her a name. Oh, and why is she looking up? What kind of alien, the local foreigner or the more exotic visitor from the stars? And what kind of a waiting room is this, doctor, dentist, automobile repair, or something else?

You can use this one line as is to start a story or a poetry. You can modify it and use it somewhere in your writing. You can even simply let it inspire the writing, without ever explicitly using these words. But . . .

WRITE!

tink
(I shall try to avoid pondering just what I was thinking when I wrote "alien waiting room" on the pad by my bed. I'm sure I had something in mind, but it seems to be gone now. Oh, well. :-)