Put your heart on the page

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the following: You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.

He goes on to say that it’s our only currency as writers. In short, we have only our emotions to sell.

Today’s exercise: Journal about an early childhood event that made you cry, terrified you, made you weak with shame or triumphant with rage. Write a story about that event. Relive these traumatic times to let the reader experience them.

(Dear Prompt Book: You’re cruel. Dear Reader: This piece is just a journal entry, so it's rough.)

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People laugh when I explain I can’t watch scary movies. Even trailers, with their minute window into a freakishly horrid world of twisted murders, vampires or bloody psychosis, leave me up all night. I analyze every detail in my house. Each creak is a killer. Reflected light from passing cars is really from a 10-inch butcher knife poised gracefully behind my back.

I have what you’d call an imagination.

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The music still sends shivers down my spine. I’m in my room, where the 11-year-old version of me had been banished for interrupting an evening with Dad with too many questions and dives behind our couch’s big, white pillows. With Mom out of town, Dad ordered a pizza and plopped us in front of the TV for hours. He never really knew what to do with kids our age.

Adam and Kyle took to it, a treat for the boys who usually were running around out back. It was torture for this bookworm; I’ve always preferred pages to on-screen stories. I also got evil, sleep-stealing nightmares from any sort of unexplained discord in any tale.

So when “It” was the movie of choice for Dad and the boys, I tried to play it cool. It wasn’t often we got Dad time, as he frequently worked long hours past our bedtime. After watching for a while through my fingers – my hands were glued to my face the entire time, as if for protection – Dad convinced me that this part was OK to watch.

His lied. I shrieked. I was sent to my room.

There, without pictures on the screen, my mind was allowed to swallow up the sounds that crept through the walls. Of course, my room was just on the other side of the living room. Each bit of silence followed by muffled voices followed by fear-inducing music haunted me, forcing my imagination to fill in the blanks with gore and horror beyond to the director’s capability.

I didn’t sleep. I hated my father for the three restless nights that followed. It’s when I developed my keen ear and eye for things that didn’t belong – the change in the breeze outside, the flash of car light at 4 a.m.

I’ll turn 30 in a month, but I’m instantly the 11-year-old curled up, knees to chest, on her bed that night when a horror movie trailer comes on. I can tell when one is on its way simply by the first three notes of the ad. This is not a gift.

I don’t know if “It” was really as bad as I made it my mind, but I’ll never find out.