Row80: I'm sensing something....




I'm really enjoying the F2K creative writing course through Writer's University.  The lesson this past week was all about senses   Besides the normal  - hear, see, taste, feel and smell - Bob came up with 3 more:  Sense of Time  (a song, a place, a specific time period), Space (open room, close cove, busy street), and Unknown  (danger).  We have to come up with 8 sentences which implied and didn't include the specific sense words.   Plus one paragraph that included all the sense without saying what the sense is.   Then let your fellow classmates identify which senses you used.   Here's mine: 

Exercise One

She danced in the chair, her head bobbing to the beat, her fingernails tapping the scarred table top in an out of sync rhythm that struck him as discordant until he recognized the sequence.


Sage’s belly tightened as her leg muscles turned to rubber when she saw who stood outside her door.


The pearl white light, filtered through the blinds, gave her the impression of prison bars across the chair.


She eyed the green liqueur and took a small sip, gagging at the blend of licorice and spices.


She covered her nose as the overwhelming odor of unwashed bodies and the copper tinge of blood hit her when she walked up to the open door.


She stumbled, dropping the flashlight and sank to the ground as the pitch black darkness of the cave weighed down upon her.


She smiled when she heard the Cat Steven’s song blaring from the radio for it reminded her of high school buddies whom she hadn’t thought of in years.


She nibbled on her lip, catching it between her teeth, not knowing how to respond to his question.




Exercise Two


Lucy stepped aside at the entrance to Martinique’s as two women, arms linked, weaved out of the door of the restaurant. The red head gave her a brilliant smile, then uttered soothing noises, as her brassy voiced companion continued her story at the top of her lungs. “Then he had the audacity to..to..to” She waved a hand, long lacquered fingernails barely missing Lucy’s face. “Think I’d go along with his insane ideas. Can you imagine…” Her voice cutting off as the door swung shut behind Lucy, enclosing her in the tiny foyer. She wrinkled her nose at the lingering sweetness of the woman’s perfume. She stepped through the foyer door into an overwhelming world of voices and music in the cavernous warehouse restaurant. As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, she smiled at the song playing on the jukebox. Lucy in the sky with Diamonds. He’s here. She inhaled the heavenly scent of garlic, onions and peppers sizzling in the open grill. She felt a hand brush her shoulder. She turned and there he stood. He always took her breath away. She rested a hand again his chest, pressed a kiss to his check, his five o’clock shadow tickling her lips.

This week the task is to take a paragraph from Poe' s A Tell Tale Heart or Faulkner's A Rose for Emily and rewrite it in a different Point of View. 1st person if written in 3rd and visa verse.  I love both these selections, especially A Rose for Emily, so fun, fun, fun.  This class is really testing my creativity. 

Still reading Writing begins with the Breath and since I'm in prep mode for Nanowrimo, just got the writer's workbook  Ready. Set, Novel!  by Chris Baty, Lindsey Grant and Tavia Stewart-Streit.  I love brainstorming.   

My goals are simple this round - write every day.  Anything beyond that is gravy. 

Check in with my fellow ROWer's here and give them some encouragement.

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.  ~Charles DeLint


4 comments:

  1. "Write every day" is a great goal. Even if it's just a bit of fluff, it's still good for the writing muscles.

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  2. I really love these exercises, Robin. Thanks for sharing them with us. The 3 additional "senses" are interesting as well, so I'll have to give some thought to how I use them in my writing.

    Have a great rest of the week!

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  3. That sounds like a fun writing course. An interesting new way of approaching writing the senses. I've signed up for NaNoWriMo as well, probably won't get to write every day but hopefully will be more productive than usual. Good luck with your goals :)

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  4. Great ideas here, loving those extra senses... I suppose I think of them in regards to describing scene, but not so much character, which is strange because of course we are always aware of our surroundings, often distractingly so. I know I am. Thanks for the tip. Also, I have recently downloaded quite a few free course from iTunes U library, from the Open University. Have a great week :) X

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