SCBWI Prompt: Lantern

What Happens When You Remember Forgotten Things

You have juicy fodder for a lovely story from down the memory lane.

The lantern brings back memories of early childhood, growing up in rural India. There was no electricity, and these lanterns lit the homes where I grew up.

The small canister at the bottom held kerosine. You used the lever in the middle to raise the glass cylinder to light the wick. The knob with a long lead is used to move the cord up and down, enabling you to control the luminosity of the lantern.

At night, before going to sleep, you turn the wick down low, so there is just enough light to let you know where the lantern is, in case you need to get up and go somewhere, usually the outhouse, in the middle of the night.

Thank you, Amy Marley, for bringing the SCBWI challenge to my attention. Prompt for May 8th is Lantern. Earlier, I saw a story about the festival of lights, inspired by the prompt Lantern.

I am back enjoying myself writing what I feel like and taking on new challenges. This story was sparked by the image I found on Free-images.com. If you’re ever stuck and don’t know what to write about, just look at the pictures on your phone, you’ll find something to write about. I have written several stories that way, and Medium even curated one of them in creativity and writing.

As always, thank you for reading and responding.

More about me:

Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.

He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)

“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”