Reena’s Xploration Challenge #421- Getting Fleeced

~ Susan St.Pierre ~ 7 Comments

“Imagine yourself as a lamb draped in a coat of stories, each strand of wool spun from your trust, your dreams, your quiet hopes. One day, hands arrive—gentle yet insistent—shearing away what you thought was yours to keep. You are left bare, shivering not from cold but from the realization that your warmth has been woven into someone else’s tapestry. Write about the moment of being fleeced—not as theft, but as transformation. Is it exploitation, or is it the inevitable shedding that reveals your truest skin?”

“Imagine your fleece as the illusions you’ve carried—comforting myths, borrowed identities, the soft fabric of belonging. When life’s shears arrive, they cut away what no longer serves you. Write about being fleeced as the painful but necessary shedding that reveals the raw, unadorned self beneath, trembling yet luminous in its honesty.”

Those shears IMHO represent the reality of both the “light” and “dark” sides of unchangeable ‘human nature’ presenting itself.
The fleece represents the accumulation of warm experiences that we collect, and save, hoping to distance ourselves from that Truth and reality. Outwardly, we attempt to appear untouched, even immune to our own undeniable ‘human nature’ but, alas, we cannot choose “how we feel” but rather must learn to manage our ‘feelings’, instead.
Once we are exposed by those shears for trusting too much, denying our own ‘dark’ tendencies, and allowing our ‘wishes’ to take control (much of this is the maturing process), something both frightening and awesome happens. We find out that we DO have agency. We can affect changes and situations for the better. But only once we allow our intellect, an embrace of self-honesty, and a dose of courage, to replace the comfortable lie we too often tell ourselves.

That lie is: “We can change ‘human nature’ in others by law, by force, or by appeal because we have conquered it in ourselves.”

That, my friends, is totally delusional, just sayin’… We must deal with the World as it is, not as we would hope it would be or we get fleeced.

Reena’s Xploration Challenge #421 – Creative Experiments and More

Can You Write a Story in …- 3/12/26 Itchy Interloper

~ Susan St.Pierre ~ 10 Comments

Here is your new story challenge: can you tell a story in 64 words using the following words in it somewhere:

  • NURSE
  • TABASCO
  • INVISIBLE
  • SPIDER
  • WINDMILL
  • MOUSTACHE

The nurse used a magnifying glass, but the teeny-tiny spider remained invisible. Clyde was going crazy since the scan revealed his unrelenting itchy moustache held an interloper! He’d tried soaking it in tabasco to ‘smoke’ the stubborn invader out to no avail.
In desperation, an electric razor was deployed. As the blades whirred like a windmill, the spider made a dash up Clyde’s nose.

64-words

Can You Tell A Story In… – Esther Chilton

Writer’s Workshop 3/11/26 A Little Encouragement

~ Susan St.Pierre ~ 7 Comments

Write about a time you taught someone else about a particular skill you have.

I am an amateur artist. Far from a master and I’m self-taught. Place me in a generic room of people and I’d score as competent, that’s all.
There’s an “eye” that people who enjoy visual arts have that differs from others. We perceive textures, color, light and shadow, and depth on a slightly different plain.

I know this because I once had spent a whole day concentrating on creating my own painting that ended in an extraordinary experience!
I was riding home late that day and was calmly looking at the landscapes outside of my window. My “artist eye” must have been still engaged because suddenly those familiar scenes took on a surreal dimension! Everything became segmented into light, shadow, color, and lines presenting to be painted. It was outside of anything ordinary. It blew my mind!

My day care kids were never, ever, given coloring books while in my care. Blank pages and multi-mediums were offered almost daily.
One of my little charges showed he had an exceptional “eye” early on. All of my kids developed artistic skills beyond their years, but I knew this boy had a gift. I encouraged him often when he doubted himself. And eventually, he left my company with a confident grasp of his own exceptional talent. His parents were not themselves artistically inclined, so I feel it’s likely that my influence made a helpful difference. {Public schooling may well have crushed his creative interest if he hadn’t started early. It’s known to do that.}
Here’s a watercolor painting he did for his own enjoyment as a teenager:

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The moral: Encourage little kids to explore their innate abilities (whatever they are) early and often!

This Week’s Writer’s Workshop Prompts: March 10, 2026 – The Sound of One Hand Typing

One-Liner Wednesday 3/11/26 Bad Idea

~ Susan St.Pierre ~ 6 Comments
Image

I believe sending kids to grade school where they’d spend 7 hours a day indoors, make them sit still, expose them to (unnatural) levels of peer pressures, expose them to unlike values of their families’ and box them in according to age groups, was the most misguided, destructive, and cruel, concept that we ever considered could be “good” for them. – sillyfrog

One-Liner Wednesday – A burning question |

Simply Six-Minutes 3/10/26 Becoming

~ Susan St.Pierre ~ 12 Comments

Christine asks us to create flash fiction by using the image below:

Image

Marla had wasted so much time.
She had pretended to be everything she wasn’t all her life. For her parents, teachers, and friends she’d performed a phony play.
Something happened on her 40th birthday that would lead her to a joyful genuine life. It was just one passing glance in the mirror. Marla saw her own beautiful soul peeking from behind the facade she’d created forever. She hated dancing lessons, she abhorred city life, and she didn’t care whether her clothes were color coordinated anymore.
Behind her playing on the TV was an ad for men’s facial-care creams. What had the world become?

Simply 6 Minutes – Welcome to the Challenge: 03/10/2026 – Stine Writing