My Two Blessings

Write a paragraph using all the senses including place, time and unknown, in addition to the normal five senses: Ashley was quite mystified by the classless little hovel Gordon had picked for their meeting.   The candle lit restaurant buzzed with conversation and the tinkling of silverware while the pianist in the corner lost himself in his rendition of some classical piece she couldn’t quite identify.   She sipped from the goblet and the spicy liqueur with hints of licorice and cherries teased her tongue. She arched a brow when the idiot plopped down in the seat, reeking of cheap musk and his cheap, off the rack suit, looked as if he had slept in it. The elderly couple eating their dinner in the next booth had more class in their wrinkly pinkies that he would ever have in a lifetime. He glanced around before he drew an envelope out of his pocket and tossed it across the table.   She frowned, fingered the much too slim, slightly grimy, grey rectangle, then covered ...

Exercise from Method and Madness class studying Alice LePlante's The Making of A Story.   The goal - to notice what you notice without trying to explain or interpret it.  Morning time, enjoying sitting out on my back patio, sipping Earl Grey and trying to write, but as usual nature distracts me.   Peppermint and lavender waft past in the cool summer breeze, blending with the fragrant steam from my tea. I’m surrounded by the chatter of squirrels and birds, leaves rustling and the hum of traffic off in the distance. A plane passes overhead, leaving a white contrail in the clear, cloudless blue sky.      A hummingbird zips by, comes back and hovers in the air a few feet away from me, chirps good morning.   So tiny, she watches me, talks some more before heading over to investigate one of my tabby cats sitting under the laurel bushes.   Wings buzzing, she dips up and weaves down, moves ten feet, five feet closer, then more until she is ...

See if you can match Earnest Hemingway's 418-word sentence quoted in this weeks lecture. Here's the hard part: it has to make sense. Word count should be between 300 and 500 words. You can use any combination of phrases you'd like, in any order, and any topic. “That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that, are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreli...

Write a 26 word sentence and each sentence has to start with the letter of the alphabet. Start backwards with Z   Zanzibar hopped into the car and headed up the coast.   Yesterday he’d been fired, for nothing really, he told himself.   X’rays revealed a tumor so he used it as an excuse for his behavior.   Winding down the lonely road, he smiled and thought of Clover, the dunderheaded dog behind the factory.   Very stupid, but oh so brave.   Undoubtedly he should have taken the dog, but they kicked him out so fast, only giving him time to clear his locker.   Trash talk, that was all, nothing serious.   So why had Blakely looked so appalled.    Really, who takes jokes literately? Quite the moron and he hadn’t been the only one.   Proud of his little ditties and songs, Zan had made a poster and hung it in the break room.   Oops!   No way he could have known Blakely or Singleton had minorities in their fam...

I'm currently taking some writing classes through Writers Village University and having fun with the exercises: The object of this lesson:  To find the rose in the rubble. Picture a vacant city lot, discarded rubble, broken bottles, clumps of weeds, perhaps a body or two, and a single rose in bloom on a fine sunny day. Now imagine someone perceived as evil -- it could be an historical figure, a fictional character, the school bully, a serial killer. Find the rose. Write a 400-500 word scene that exposes something of beauty in the character of an otherwise evil man, woman or monster. Your scene should represent the contrast between the character's negative and positive features. Jacob knelt in the rubble from the dilapidated building, a big bruiser of a man with arms like tree stumps, his bald head shiny with sweat. He grasped the two by four again, his knuckles torn and bloody, slammed it against the old safe. The board splintered, pieces flew everyw...