Five Minute Friday - Paint

Five Minute Friday is a special time set aside each week where, as our hostess and inspiration, Lisa-Jo Baker, puts it, "We write for five minutes flat. All on the same prompt...no extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation. Unscripted. Unedited. Real." 

Today's prompt is paint. So...here...we...

Go!

Artists paint with watercolors, acrylics, or oils. People who paint houses paint with latex...flat or gloss. But writers! Writers paint with words! At least good writers do. 

A writer's words, when coupled with just the right amount of color, can, literally, take us to another place and time, painting a picture in our head, and helping us to visualize every detail of what's happening in their story. As I type this, I think of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She had just such a word-painting ability.

I remember when I was a young girl, my mother and I would read the 'Little House' books over and over again. We loved them all, but our favorite was The Long Winter. We'd always wait til the hottest part of summer to read that one...and with good reason!

The pictures that Laura painted were so vivid! Through her written words, Laura Ingalls Wilder could transport my mother and I from our hot, non-air-conditioned living room in Missouri in the 1970's, into her and her family's home, lives, and world, there in De Smet, South Dakota in the late 1800's. My mother and I would become so engrossed in what we were reading about the prairie blizzards that would suddenly come upon the little town with a vengeance and last for days...the darkening skies, then the pitch black as the sun would be blotted out by swirling, icy, snow...the wind howling for days...the deafening silence that would occur when it all suddenly stopped...the dazzling sunlight, the clear, blue skies, and the biting cold. It was crazy! Even though it was 100 degrees outside, my mother and I would 'come to' after reading about such an episode, and we would, literally, have goose-pimples from being so cold! It's a good thing we didn't read The Long Winter in the wintertime! We probably would have froze to death! :)

Yes, Laura Ingalls Wilder definitely had the ability to paint with words, and I value the special times that my mother and I shared through the reading of her books and being entertained by her in our very own home. 

Stop!

Until Next Time...

~Rebecca

#FiveMinuteFriday, #LauraIngallsWilder