EXERCISE: Five similes!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 30 April 2013

We haven't done one of these in a while. I have a bookcase here in my office with an assortment of odds and ends. Among them is a kind of fat little paperback with the beguiling title of "Falser Than a Weeping Crocodile and Other Similes" by Elyse Sommer and Mike Sommer. And flipping the pages, we might find something like:

A small, plump woman, with her waist cinctured in sternly, like a cushion with a noose around it. -- John Cheever

(Eyes) glittered like a string of Christmas tree icicles -- Donald McCaig

Tuneless and atonal, like the improvised songs of children caught up in frantic play -- Robert Silverberg

Grunting taxicabs... wallowing yellowly in the bright sun like panting porkers -- Harvey Swados

Surprised as a sardine that went to sleep in the ocean and woke up in a delicatessen store -- Arthur Baer

There you go. Five little similes. Feel free to pick one and do something with it, take all five and roll them up in your own confection, or maybe just play with the images, feelings, and so forth. Story, poetry, even essayry (whoops, that's not a word!).

Just write!