YELLOW
I took a writing class and resisted the prompt. The story that came forth surprised me.
Writing prompts feel like a lacy thong I’d buy for a version of myself who doesn’t actually exist.
She lives in shop windows. I live in cotton boyshorts.
Also, she probably follows prompts.
I don’t.
I steal things instead.
For me, writing isn’t a monologue, it’s a conversation.
I need something to react to.
Something to take, turn, mess with.
A sentence.
A song.
A fragment.
If writing is an exhale, I need it to be preceded by an inhale.
So when my Creative Play instructor assigned us a simple task: Write something about yellow, I did what I always do.
I resisted.
Not because I had nothing to say.
But because there was nothing yellow under my skin.
I’m already deep in writing my memoir, The Exquisite Art of Being Wrong, and using precious writing time or headspace for something else felt like cheating on a lover.
Also, I couldn’t freaking think of what to write.
Which, in my experience, is usually a sign that I’m trying to start in the wrong place.
Because when it works - when it really works - writing never follows the rules. And a prompt feels too much like a rule.
So I’ve learned to lean into my resistance. To use it.
As a crowbar.
A portal
A parachute.
I’ve often joked that my ideas have ideas while I’m having them. Under deadline this can be a curse, but used right, it’s a doorway every single time.
All I need is a “mother idea”.
And she doesn’t even have to be related to what I think I’m trying to write.
The rest just… follows.
So below is the tiny story that came out of this process. After, I’ll share the exact cascade of ideas that led to it.
YELLOW
The rage came down softly.
Not a bomb. A parachute.
Doris felt it settle over her shoulders, cooling everything beneath it. Her pulse slowed. The crowd blurred.
He was late.
Again.
Five minutes, he always said.
Just five minutes.
Five minutes that became twenty.
Thirty.
An hour of congealed steak, apologetic waiters and her pretending everything was fine, no really.
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he’d told her once, laughing lightly, as if she were a child. “You’re so sensitive. Maybe it’s your hormones.”
Maybe it was.
Or maybe, the quiet rage said now, it was something else.
She smoothed the yellow satin over her hips.
The dress caught the stadium lights - a small sun wrapped around her body.
Zumba, salads, weights. Paying off.
Commitment made visible.
Worth something, somewhere.
People were looking.
She could feel it.
The small, involuntary glances.
The look. The look back.
A beautiful woman, alone.
Tonight was her 40th birthday.
Tonight she had planned to stand beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and sing.
Her favourite song.
Make it their song, perhaps.
She checked her phone.
Nothing.
The screen stared back. Blank. Indifferent.
8:20.
Irritated, she stuffed it back into her red leather clutch.
A woman stood a few yards away in an oversized ochre sweater, a stack of yellow plastic bracelets sliding up and down her wrist. She held a sign, crooked hand-lettering that read:
LOOKING TO BUY A TICKET
Doris watched her. The hopeful tilt of her chin. Her dark bangs and funky green glasses. The way she rose slightly on her toes each time someone passed, unabashed in her enthusiasm.
Before her mind could intervene, her red leather pumps were already moving.
“I have a spare ticket,” she heard herself say.
The woman blinked. “How much?”
Doris smiled. It felt strange on her face. New.
“Utterly and completely free.”
For a second, the woman didn’t move. Then her whole body lit up.
“FOR REAL?! Oh my God, are you serious?!”
She laughed and clapped her hands together, bracelets clacking. Then she stepped forward and hugged Doris.
“Uh, sorry,” she said, not looking like she meant it at all. Her eyes sparkled. “I’m a hugger.”
Doris held out the ticket.
The woman took it with one hand and stuck out the other. “I’m Anne.”
“Doris.”
Anne looped her arm through Doris’s without asking. “I can’t believe this. I almost didn’t come. I had this whole… sensible phase.” She rolled her eyes. “Recently divorced. Trying to be responsible. And then I thought, screw it. It’s Coldplay.”
Screw it, thought Doris, something warm and electric unfurling behind her breastbone. It’s Coldplay.
At coat check, she glanced at her phone one last time.
Nothing.
Five minutes, he would say later.
Traffic.
A meeting.
You know how it is.
She powered it off. Tossed it into her purse.
“Ready?” Anne said, practically vibrating.
Doris nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Inside, the stadium pulsed, music throbbing through the concrete, through the soles of her shoes, up into her bones.
They found their seats. Sat. Stood again almost immediately, laughing.
Anne talked easily, in bursts - about her ex, about the tickets she hadn’t bought, about how Yellow had been her favourite song since she was sixteen.
Doris found herself answering.
Small things at first.
Then more.
Nothing important.
Everything important.
When the opening chords began, something in the air changed. A collective inhale.
Anne grabbed her arm. “This is it.”
They stood, bodies angled toward the stage, faces tipped up.
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
The song moved through Doris like a wave.
She felt it - suddenly, unmistakably - the space beside her.
Not empty.
Open.
Anne’s hand found hers, squeezed, then let go as she threw both arms into the air, singing, off-key and radiant.
Doris laughed. She didn’t remember deciding to. It rose out of her, unpracticed.
She lifted her own arms. Sang.
The words were different in her mouth now. Or maybe she was.
Oh what a thing to do
Anne was shouting something, pointing upward. “Look! Look!”
Doris followed her gaze.
The Jumbotron.
Two women bathed in light, flushed and bright, temples damp, eyes sparkling. They waved, ridiculous and gleeful, blew kisses.
There she was.
Not waiting.
Not watching the door.
Not calculating how long was too long.
Here.
Singing.
Alive.
Beside her, Anne whooped, spinning once in place, bracelets flashing.
Doris turned back to the stage.
This, she thought, surprised by her steadiness,
was what it felt like
to stop waiting.
Below is the cascade of random, unrelated ideas that form the skeleton of the story you just read:
I started by listening to Coldplay’s Yellow.
Which made me think of their kiss cam scandal.
And that made me think about why people have affairs.
And that made me think of an example from the book Hold Me Tight where a couple is in therapy because the man is habitually late to dates with his wife.
And that made me think of Chelsea Fagan talking about how the real polyamory we all need is friendship, not more lovers.
And all of this got me thinking…
Maybe prompts aren’t meant to be followed.
Maybe they’re meant to be resisted, pressed against, twisted, misused.
Because it’s not obedience that creates anything interesting.
It’s engagement.
And engagement, even reluctant,
is enough to wake something up.
Okay, your turn:
What’s a mother idea that you’re kicking around right now? Have you ever written a piece from a random jumble of disconnected dots? How do you lean into resistance?
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