Write about a character in the woods.
A simple prompt, really. Deceptively simple. The woods can mean a lot of things, and what woods appear says a lot about the character. The golden-lit woods Alex dances through barefoot tell me that Alex is happiest when she is free, and the cold, snowless woods that Calen hunts in tell me that Calen expects life to be hard. But what comes out of that prompt is a character sketch, the most valuable...

I drove behind a car from California today.

I drove behind a car from California and I 

thought I was home

I didn't even understand why my hands weren't gripping the steering wheel quite so tightly

Why my breath came a little easier and the red glow when they hit the brakes was comforting 

Not irritating

But then I was crossing a bridge

They changed lanes and memory's eye understood messy red script

I should have recognized it before--

The...

If I stopped living, would I learn to breathe? If I stopped rushing through life, shoving experiences into my resume like breadsticks in my purse, would I be able to fully thrive? My life is a litany of successes, guarding prying eyes from the failures in their shadows. My life is a cycle of applications and then the wave of rejections that crashes in its wake, a handful of bright pearls sparkling in the endless tsunami of trash. And this...