Accompany Me

Naomi Ansano

Accompany me.

Those were the first words David said to Simon, the plea soft and earnest. For years, Simon’s fingers danced across the keys, the two of them making beautiful music every night. For three hours they would come together, perform, and then part ways.

Isn’t it funny, David mused one night, how “accompany” and “a company” sound the same? You accompany me for a company.

I like your company. The words slipped out before Simon realized he’d spoken them aloud.

I like yours, too. You accompany me well.

The audience arrived and the two men smiled at each other one final time before the curtain rose.

“I’m David, your singer, and Simon, on piano, will be accompanying me this evening.”

They were the same words David spoke every night, but this time they sent something fizzing through Simon.

Have dinner with me, he coaxed, that first night.

Watch a movie with me, the next.

Spend the night.

Stand before everyone we know and declare out love for one another.

Accompany me, indeed.

Interview by C. VanWinkle
September 23, 2025

What was the prompt that you responded to? Can you describe it for me?

It was a comic about a singer who introduces himself on stage and introduces the accompanist. He says, “I’m David, and Simon will be accompanying me tonight.” And then the twist is that it's not just accompanying on the piano, they go out afterwards. They go on a date, they go back home, they have dinner together, brush their teeth together, get in bed together. It's very cute. Just a fun little play on the word “accompany.”

What was your first impression of it?

I was a little nervous about writing a piece for it. I felt like it was this art piece that had everything it needed. I thought, “This is so sweet and so perfect. What do I have to bring to the table here?” So this was a fun challenge. I was definitely intimidated at first. I sat with it for a few days with no idea what to do. It’s just a very well-rounded piece. I really liked it. I found it very delightful.

How did you get started writing your own piece?

I had a lot of false starts, I will say. I eventually just sat down and opened up a Scrivener document and made like 15 different subdocuments. I said, “I'm going to give myself five minutes to write whatever comes to mind. At the end of that five minutes, if I like it, I'll keep going, and if I don't like it, then I'll move on to the next one.” I think I got through seven or eight and I decided to stick with this one.

Actually, this was not what I was originally going to submit. We had an island-wide power outage that lasted 24 hours. I was working on this during that, and I ended up losing what I’d been working on. I had a brief moment of panic, but then I thought that was the perfect experience to happen because I was already on a time crunch, and it’s intended to be a fun thing. So when I lost that, I decided to just go back to the previous one that I’d been working on that I really liked. I did a lot of just playing around with it in a lot of different directions. I had one that was super lyrical, but still prose. I wrote a poem, but I decided I definitely wanted to go prose with this because that's most of what I do. It was all over the place.

Sounds you were doing it right!

That’s something I used to do a lot and I don't anymore. Now I think I need to lock in and have a plan when I start. It was nice to get back to the basics and play. I feel like I've lost a lot of the play of writing, and this is a really nice reminder that I don't have to approach writing as a purely serious thing. It can be fun and playful too. I've spent so long learning how to take it seriously. I do want writing to be my career, and you do have to take it seriously for that, but I drilled in the seriousness so much that now I'm having to relearn the play aspect of it. It's a blend. And the best art comes when you have playful and serious mixed together.

I totally agree. Hey, You said there was an island-wide blackout. Where do you live?

I'm currently living in Curaçao, which is in the same island system as Aruba.

Cool! How does living there affect your writing?

So much more than I expected, in a good way and a bad way. I'm somebody who writes best at night, especially in the midnight to 2:00 a.m. range, and when it's cool out. Autumn and the time of night when nobody should be awake. Well, we don't have Autumn in the Caribbean, and I wake up really early because it's bright and it's hot. I naturally wake up at 6:00 or 6:30 now, which used to be when I went to sleep. So I'm not awake at my most productive times and I don't have my most productive weather anymore. That has been a big adjustment. My productivity has dropped to a quarter of what it used to be, and I have to be a lot more intentional with my time. I'm writing different things too. I historically have been very atmospheric, writing things that are set in the Autumn, in the Appalachian Mountains. And now it's 95 degrees where I am.

The things that I'm drawn to writing are also naturally shifting. I find myself looking at ideas that I've been wanting to work on for a really long time, realizing I don't think that's who I am as a writer anymore. I'm rediscovering my art. This piece [I responded to] is so different from anything I would normally write, and it's really cool encountering that as I'm trying to figure out who am I as a writer now. It's just a nice little data point that's helping me explore that a little bit.

So how does this piece that you just wrote relate to the rest of your work?

It's very different. I historically have been a very lyrical writer; I have very often been accused of writing purple prose. I would say this is less lyrical than what I normally write, though I did want to go lyrical a little bit just because it's about music. I think everything I write is going to be at least a little lyrical.

The prompt also had this structure to it. It's a comic, there's panels. So this is in some ways more structured than I normally go, and I'm learning to give myself that structure. I write books and get to the end of the first draft, and realize, “Oh, there's no plot here.” [laughs] There’s still not a huge amount of plot in this piece; it’s kind of prose poemy. But having that guideline helped me stay focused in a way that I sometimes struggle with and am working on. So that was really fun.

I do tend to write more fantasy, and I thought I would bring a fantasy element into this. I'm surprised that I didn't because pretty much everything I write gets a little fantasy in some way. But I have been thinking lately that I want to start writing more contemporary stuff. I think this was a reminder that I might as well try, and if it doesn't work out, that's fine.

The imagery in the comic isn’t visually bonkers either. They’re pretty ordinary, everyday images. It's not unusual that a prompt someone receives is a lot more out there, less relatable, abstract.

For me, that would have been easier! I think if I’d received something super abstract, I would know exactly what to do with it. So it’s perfect that this one was more straightforward. I don't know how to handle a straightforward prompt. [laughs] I don't know!

It’s so interesting that “normal” is what's challenging for you!

In my one contemporary romance that I've done, there isn't really a fantasy aspect. But I brought it to two different groups to workshop, and everyone said, “You're so clearly projecting that there's gonna be a monster element to this.” I was like, “No, but if everyone's picking up on that, maybe there should be.” I'm just always so fantasy.

Do you work from prompts much?

I don't very often. I have an undergrad degree in creative writing, so I did work from prompts a lot. But lately, I have too many ideas in my head. I'm trying to whittle down the ideas; I don't want to add more. Actually, I've been thinking a lot lately that I really love having a prompt to work from and it’s something I really miss from my college days.

I loved getting a poem, a word, a piece of art. I went to a farm school so there were beautiful views everywhere, and sometimes we'd go outside and look at the view. I loved working from a prompt and it's something that I don't do anymore, so when I found out about this, I thought, “Yes, this has really been missing from my writing process.”

How important was it to you to stay close to or faithful to this prompt?

I'm actually surprised by how faithful I stayed to it because that's not something I normally do. I actually got in trouble for [deviating] a lot in college. Our professors would give us a prompt and I'd think, “Okay great, I'm taking one word from this prompt and I'm doing something completely different.” And the 15 leaps in my brain that it took to get there made sense to me.

Some of my earlier attempts strayed pretty far. One that I thought I would submit was kind of faithful but did get into a lot of backstory that was not in the initial comic. But I found myself mostly wanting to stick with it because the comic really resonated with me. I just really loved it. Normally when I get a prompt, I see it as a good seed for my own ideas. I think, “That's great, that's cute, love that for whoever came up with the prompt, but my brain is going to take it in a very different direction.” And with this, I just loved it so much that I wanted to sit with it more. Most of my attempts that were really different just felt wrong as a response to that. I couldn't articulate why.

Just didn’t feel right, I suppose. Last question. What is your advice for a new person getting their prompt today?

Just have fun with it. At first, I was overwhelmed and started getting in my head a little bit. Once I just let myself have fun, it was such a great experience. It sparked my creativity in a new and fun way that I'm already noticing in other stuff I'm doing. Just have fun with it.

Call Number: B122VA | B123PP.anAcco

​​Naomi Ansano is a writer who lives in the Country of Curaçao.