What do you Want?: A Writing Assignment

Here's a Writing Assignment for everyone:

Respond to the question, "What do you want?"

You get 22 short lines to answer. Include the cost and location of your desire(s).

Consider if there are ridiculous items or facets to your dream; note anything potentially standing in the way of achieving what you want.

Do not let the consideration of these things hinder your writing. Simply bear witness to the fact that they may exist.

(Naming stumbling blocks is powerful.)

You get bonus points if you are able to draw from a famous dead Russian writer's thoughts.

Below, you will find an example of such a response by David Ray.

This is a poem. Yours need not be considered a poem.

Submit these as they are composed. I shall publish those that most entertain me on my blog.

Peace,

Melissa B

Poem: "Costal Farmlet" by David Ray, from Music of Time: Selected and New Poems. © The Backwaters Press. Reprinted with permission.

Costal Farmlet

"A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm."
—Chekhov

I want a costal farmlet.
I desire it very much.
I saw it advertised
in the classifieds and I presume
that coastal means our land
comes right down
to the sea with the whitecaps
lashing romantically, and farmlet
means we can grow
gnarled trees on our headland
and let sheep roam. It is about cheap
enough for us if we borrow, beg
and steal, pawn a few poems, also write
a harlequin romance or two, and it's
only 9000 miles from the place
we call home. There's not much
of a hitch except the Immigration
would not let us stay in the country
to live in our farmlet. But still,
I want it and think we should go
look at it, right now, this moment,
while tangy sweet gooseberries glow.