I attend a writing workshop led by mystery author Blaize Clement where we do five minute timed writings based on a random word prompt. The results are rough and raw but there's usually potential somewhere in the messy pile of words - the birth of a new character, an intriguing idea for a story, a dashing bit of description. So, in the spirit of pulling a bit more of myself out of my shell, here's something (unedited - gasp!) I wrote the other day...
The prompt: "a lie"
The results: "It was a lie like so many others she'd told. It slid off her tongue like the words were sweet and she was offering them up like candy. Problem was, I had had enough of her candy, enough of her lies. I would take the truth, drink it straight up, no matter how bitter and sour it was. I told her this and she smiled and spilled forth more fibs and prevarications. I stared at her, let them bounce off me and back at her. They stuck to her and she floundered as she tried to pick the globs and blobs off of her but they were growing and spreading and soon she was drowning in her lies. She was being eaten from the outside in by her own words."
This is typed straight from my notebook, where my handwriting runs amok, so I can't be sure that "drowning" isn't really "draining" (or "swimming" for that matter.) It's rough-and-tumble writing, and I love the freedom of it. I feel like a little girl playing in a mud puddle without wearing my raincoat and boots.
Go on, give a try. Go play with your words...
That's pretty impressive for "off the cuff" writing, Madeline!
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about the freedom of that kind of writing. It's exhilarating to just go with the words, writing with no restrictions.
Of course, with me, it's often "Clean up on Aisle, rather Paragraph, 1." :-)
It is exhilarating, isn't it? We can mix metaphors, sling similes around, dig deep for a different way to describe something or someone. It really is like playing! :)
ReplyDelete