#6: Brekkie Epie: Mandrake

Let spooky season commence! The Cru mixes it up a bit this week by writing after coffee and breakfast instead of later in the day. We discuss how the time and setting can affect the process of writing. Then we kick off our spook-tacular month of monster prompts with: Mandrake: The mandrake is a plant; its roots grow in human form, male and female, and shriek when torn from the ground. It is of great use in medicine, but anyone who hears the plant's cry dies or goes mad. It was therefore a custom to tie a hungry dog to the plant by a cord and place a piece of meat beyond its reach. To get at the meat the dog tugged at the cord and dragged up the plant, while its master remained safely out of hearing. The mandrake grows in the East, near Paradise. In order to conceive, the female elephant must eat some mandrake root. From the Medieval Bestiary.Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!  Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do. Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.