My Response to Writing Prompt Wednesday #1

What I wrote and some thoughts about the prompt

I listened to The Magic Flute overture by Mozart for my prompt. (And, to be honest, I didn’t realize the next song in the opera would autoplay, so my response actually took me the span of the first two-ish songs, about 6 minutes or so.)

Sometimes (usually?) my initial response to a writing prompt is a semi-panicked “I don’t know what to write!” kind of feeling. Anytime I get that feeling, I remind myself: Take a deep breath and just play with words and have fun.

Before starting the music, I did some quick associations to give myself a sense of a setting and character to work with. For me, listening to classical music makes me think of taking ballet class, so I went with that. I try not to get hung up on details like what to name a character when I’m first drafting something, so I either use an X or whatever random name pops into my head, knowing I can go back and change it later.

My mental process before starting this prompt was along the lines of: Okay she’s in a ballet class, she’s going to find a magical object, and her name is um, names that start with A . . . names that start with B—wait, Bea is a name! Press play and . . . go!