Thursday, December 27, 2012

Nothing Fancy


Hellooooooooo!
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Yeah, so about this ghost town here. My bad. My intention was to write here often. I figured it would be a good way to practice, given that I fancy myself a writer. I guess that's a bit of a stretch since a writer, according to traditional convention, typically...writes. But hey, I'm writing now, am I not? And this is because I complained about my own lack of blog posts to a friend who blogs and asked for an assignment. She obliged, as follows:
Your assignment is this: find three general categories of activity or thought in which you engage fairly regularly (you like food, could be food, or parenting, or existentialism, or candy, or movies, or presidential history. It doesn't really matter. Whatever floats your boat) - make headings out of them - now write no more than one paragraph about the latest instance of each. Repeat on a set schedule (every other day). Rules and structure can be very useful in a creative endeavour.
So this is what I will do now, at least until I come up with some other sort of inspiration on my own, assuming that such a thing may happen someday.

Okay, so category number one. Humm. Let's call it:

Readin' and Writin' and Suchlike

I just finished The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx, which, as might be expected of a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a damn fine novel. Just started reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna. Also reading a book by Joseph Sestito, called Write for Your Lives: Inspire Your Creative Writing with Buddhist Wisdom, which I happened upon in the local authors section at my local library. I'm hoping to win bonus locavore points for this. As for writing, you're looking at it. Not much of a paragraph, this, but I'm going for quick and dirty today.

Next topic. Yes, I suppose food floats my boat, or at the very least, keeps it from sinking. Thus:

Good Eats

Today I had lunch at Lemon Grass with my friend Sandee, the managing editor for The Funny Times, where I have worked off and on in various roles for over 25 years. I had Chicken with Thai Basil. Quite good. Good lord, this is ridiculously boring. It needs some spice, I think. Try this: I was daintily nibbling on a jalapeno pepper when all at once, a flying zombie vampire hobbit dressed as Abraham Lincoln...aw, screw it. That one's been done to death. I'm having chicken soup for dinner. Might make some Paleo biscuits to go with it.

Two down. I suppose the obvious choice for category three would be:

My Adorable Child

My adorable child hates to read. This really irks me. And apparently, yelling at him and telling him that he's going to LOVE reading someday, dammit, is not going to help him like it any better. Go figure. For now I'm looking for books with only one sentence per page, as this seems to keep him from getting overwhelmed. I can tell he really does want to read, he just finds it difficult and doesn't want to do all the practice it takes to get good at it. Just where in the hell he picked up that attitude, I can't begin to imagine.

There. Done. Not pretty; nothing fancy. But it's a start. Or a restart, anyhow. More to come...

I think.





4 comments:

Mistinguette said...

I will offer you a writing prompt whenever you ask for one. It will keep me in the habit of thinking of myself as a writer.

And have you see Zoom/Re-Zoon/The Other Side? My three favorite books this year. They are all about perspective. They have NO words. (And you know how much I love words.) Instead, they require imagination, invite delightful attention to detail, and cultivate the ability to construct a narrative. Istvan Banyai is the author.

Blayne said...

Thanks, Mistinguette. I may just hit you up for a prompt one of these days.
Just ordered all three books from the library. The other thing my boy hates is writing. Do you suppose these books might work as writing prompts for him? i.e. Write a sentence or two about what he sees on the page?

ToniK said...

I am so glad you did this!

I know it dissatisfies you in its imperfection, but your next assignment is to do it again anyway. (I recommend keeping the same headings for a while, even if you feel anxious about it). And then do it again again. The thing I have found is that the accumulation of observations in a blog can reveal interesting patterns and jumpstart other writing and various creative tangents.

Yay!

Blayne said...

Geez, you're awfully bossy. Which is exactly what I need in a prompter. Crack that whip! I'll give it the old college try.

Yay!