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I’ve been playing a lot with really short stories this week for my daily writing with my students. Many of them are succumbing to their inner writer’s pounding on their brains to be let out and past the ‘I don’t get it’ sentries. I shared mine from yesterday with them so they can see that it doesn’t take that much effort and your head stops taking a beating from that inner writer. I wrote this on the board: Write a story about something you can’t live without. I shared this:

There were things I couldn’t live without, but it was too late to go back. Days ago, it seemed like we had all the time in the world, and now, we were on the run. No one was tracking us, yet, but going back would be too risky.

Most of all, I wanted my guitar. It was too cumbersome to carry and I left it behind. I had

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some of my music sheets, for all the good they’d do me. I had pieced together some photos, but left behind the albums they’d been glued into. “What was that?”

Wrenching me back to the present, the boy had grabbed my arm. “What?” Stopping, I tried to calm my labored breathing so I could hear. “I don’t,” my head snapped around when I heard the snap of a branch.

Pulling the boy down with me, we crouched and I put my finger to my lips and stared into his eyes. He nodded slightly and we waited.