EXERCISE: Growing Up Is Hard To Do...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 11:19:55 -0500

(p. 51, Your Mythic Journey, Sam Keen)

 - What ten commandments would best summarize the rules, ideals, and taboos your family advocated?
 - What jokes, stories, cliches, and slogans were told until they were as polished as riverbed pebbles?  What were the unconscious messages hidden within your family's oral tradition?
 - Who were the good and bad, clean and dirty characters in your family lore?  What jokes were told?

That's all I'm going to borrow from Sam today.

So, very simply, take a walk through your memories.  Tell us about a time that defines your family.    Go ahead and respond to Sam's exercises, but then wrap it up in a story, a tale of growing up you.

Don't worry whether it's strictly real or not, we'll never know.  But do make it reflect your life, your family, and the times and places that they were in.

The story of Grandma and the flood in her back yard?

Uncle Phil and the flat tire?

How about the time...

sure, tell us about it.

"We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side."  Thomas Mann

Not to mention the allure of antagonism and similar contrariness!

EXERCISE: A Starting Line

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 22:30:00 -0500

There was nowhere to throw her trash.

There you go.  Let the mind wander, and tell us who she is, who is the narrator, what the trash is, and why not being able to throw it away is important.

Add another character or three.  Wrap well in setting and scenery.

Raise the stakes, build the conflict, make us feel for our protagonist and beware the wiles of the canny antagonist.  (would that be trash-canny? :-)

Make the climax glorious?  Or witty.  Or wise.

There was nowhere to throw her trash.

Start there.  Where you end is up to you.

(p.s.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about, here's a short explanation.  Take that starting line, "There was nowhere to throw her trash."  Use it as the starting line or even just as a theme behind a story, poem, or other piece of writing.  Okay?  Simple, eh?)

EXERCISE: a phrase in search of words?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 00:36:37 -0500

The phrase?

To race the wind on gossamer wings

The words?

Write some!

(The challenge here is simple.  Whether as a title, a line within your work, or perhaps even as an inspirational metaphor that is simply implicit, go ahead and use the phrase "to race the wind on gossamer wings."  Or you can begin with this phrase and eventually drop it completely -- but write :-)