31 Days of Art, Day 22: Elegance

It may be a little obvious, but I’m a little behind in this challenge. I have an idea that incorporates the prompts for Days 16-18, but Days 19-21 were just too jam-packed with, among other things, launching a mini-horror anthology. I didn’t want to just let go of the challenge, as I’ve been enjoying the discipline and creative spark that’s been brewing, but I also have to come to terms with the fact that there is a finite number of hours in a day, and a limit to how many of those hours are at my personal disposal. So, I wrote down the 16-18 prompt in a quick outline and saved it in the folder I made for this challenge. I also came up with an idea, not related to the challenge, but to a tumblr post I’d seen here and there. That idea, I wrote down on an index card during a break from class. It’s currently inserted as a bookmark in the book I’m reading, and I may take it out later and flesh it out.

Today’s prompt, “elegance,” came to me with an image of an expensive, hand-tooled fountain pen gently scratching beautiful penmanship into a piece of thick, white paper… but the ink is a deep red that dries to brown, and the person writing is not sending a well-crafted letter to a penpal. Again, the outline for the story showed up with the image; however, sitting in class all day, and then setting up promo and marketing for the mini-anthology launch, doesn’t not leave me with many brain cells to flesh out a full story. So I made myself write the three paragraphs that were already in my fingers, and I’ll finish the story up at some point in the future…

Day 22: Elegance

The nub scratched gently across the thick paper, just the right amount of pressure applied to the old-fashioned fountain pen to accent the curlicues, the painstaking dot of the i’s as the words bled onto the page.

The penmanship was the most beautiful thing, aesthetically speaking, filled with an old-school elegance he had not seen in years. Up to the peaks of the strong l’s and h’s. Just so with the sharp stakes of the scrawled p’s. Yes, the handwriting was the most interesting thing about what she was laying down on the paper.

The words… well, they wouldn’t matter as much, would they? Some trite pablum, forgiveness or penance, it was all the same.

To be continued…

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