I saw 'first sentence' in the title for last Friday's prompt and felt inspired:
"A first sentence is all it takes to get the story going. Just start writing and see where it goes," suggested Mrs. Mowry as she handed out the composition notebooks. Some of her students eagerly grasped them, while others reluctantly dropped it on their desk. With a shuffle they each pulled out their pencil cases, although Charlie already had his half-chewed pencil in hand.
"Mrs. Mowry, do we need to write in pencil?" asked one of the younger girls, Alicia. Her utensils of choice were falling out of their case in a myriad of colors.
"So long as it's legible and I can read it you can use whatever you want." The teacher smiled as the girl excitedly picked up a bright blue pen, and then a green one. "But I do recommend one color at a time."
When I was in grade school we were sometimes given notebooks to write in. In 6th grade, my teacher decided to make us write for 15 minutes every morning to fill up a page a day. Being the quiet rebel I was (and am, really) the assignment orders to write strictly in pencil and continuously for a certain amount of time made me resist it.
I still have the journal, and I find it hilarious in retrospect that I tried to pass off writing "AHHHH" for an entire page. My teacher wrote a simple note in an angry red marking pen that it was 'not acceptable to count towards the writing goal.' It was worth a shot, I guess.
It was a very valuable experience, though. I usually used any free time during the school day to write or read anyway, and the journal ensured it would all be in one place. I'm pretty sure the book I was working on is lost forever on the school's ancient computer files, and I had a bad habit of writing on loose pieces of paper.
I also sometimes wrote a diary entry on days when I wasn't feeling creative, and that's nice to look back on. Not that I was always writing about great times, but it can be important to have reminders of how much you've grown. How much has changed.
Anyway, I certainly didn't mean to go into this much detail, but maybe it's interesting to some of you. My teacher wasn't Mrs. Mowry, but in this little fictional class I decided to give them an encouraging experience, colored pens and all.
Thanks for reading!