EXERCISE: After the Wedding Bells?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 2 April 2009

And they lived happily ever after?

Writer's Digest, October 2007, page 21, offers a contest prompt:

"After years with a traveling carnival, the strong man and bearded lady try to adjust to a normal life as a married couple." Taken from The Writer's Book of Matches by the staff of fresh boiled peanuts, a literary journal

Two characters learning to live together. Feel free to adjust the characters -- do any of us really fit into this world? And learning about marriage together -- I think any married couple will tell you that's an adventure. Work, housing, the neighbors, children?

Go ahead, tell us about a happily ever after couple.

EXERCISE: Give this a try?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 3 April 2009

Hum? Over here http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com/2009/04/writing-exercise.html Louise Marley passes along Kay Kenyon's suggestion about a good writers' workshop exercise. I'm not quite sure how we can transform this for the online world, but maybe we can come up with a way to do it.

First step apparently is to have everyone in the group toss in a starting line. Just one line! Come on, we can do that (Who collects them? Have a Master of the Exercise, aka ME?)

Then I think they are saying everyone pulls one line from the bowl? Hum, that's kind of hard to do online? Maybe have the ME send out one line and we'll all work against that? Anyway, this step is to write from that starting line for five minutes. Five minutes? Heck, you can do that. And share the results (read out loud looks a lot like post to the list, right?).

Next, they suggest pulling another line from the bowl. I guess the ME posts another line? And write again, but this time for 10 minutes. Quick, quick, just let the words run. And share again.

Final stage. One more line from the ME. And write once more, but this time for 20 minutes. And share once more.

Hum -- they suggest that in an hour (20 + 10 + 5 is about 35, plus sharing time?) you can write some surprising and interesting stuff. Something to warm up the old writing musculature. In our case, it would probably take... 4 days? One day for suggesting lines, one day for each timed writing spree and responses? Plus another day for talking about how it went, which makes a nice week of running rampant?

Oh, and for bonus points, maybe the ME could post the extra lines sometime for those of us who might like to just use them for starting points? Yeah, sounds like a plan.

Could be interesting? What do you think? Anybody want to be the ME?

Skyrockets in flight, quick writing delight?