Sharing with the Class
Jan. 26th, 2011 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Writing class tonight was fun. Sorta. It involved my submission getting strung up for in-depth textual analysis of "don't write like this" by the teacher.
But prior to my crucifixion, she (novelly) had us do a writing exercise. She gave us three topics ("Australia," "Murder Mystery," and "Memoir") and asked us to write the first few opening lines of a book for as many as we cared to do.
Now, earlier I had happened to read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanan_mcguire's entry on it being Australia Day today, so I cribbed most of my few lines from her post and its comments for the first.
The floods had come and there were sharks swimming in the streets. Not that it was so different than usual, particularly around the law offices, but usually there wasn't twenty feet of water atop the pavement. Venomous snakes, spiders the size of a man's hand, stingrays and saltwater crocs... as one wit had observed, Australians didn't so much love their country as suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
After that, still having about twenty minutes of time to kill until the writing challenge time was up, I pondered the other categories. Memoir... ha, right. I don't like writing about myself (...she proclaims, on her blog...). Murder mysteries are almost equally out of my purview. But the latter I at least took a stab at, and think it turned out interesting.
It wasn't the fact that the place absolutely reeked of coffee that got me; no one sensible would expect anything less of the newest Starbucks ripoff, and my waistline wasn't so far gone yet that the smell actually made me vomit. No, what made me shiver and sweat as I stood in line for the office's order was the little ghost girl standing in the corner. Not more than five, with sweet blonde pigtails, the dark hollows of what had been her eyes were fixed on me.
Why couldn't she have found me before Tommy and I tried again?
And despite my afterward getting lambasted by the teacher, she (and the rest of the class) very much liked both of those. Not sure if I'll ever do anything with either (especially the Australia one), but I thought some of y'all might also like to read them.
But prior to my crucifixion, she (novelly) had us do a writing exercise. She gave us three topics ("Australia," "Murder Mystery," and "Memoir") and asked us to write the first few opening lines of a book for as many as we cared to do.
Now, earlier I had happened to read
seanan_mcguire's entry on it being Australia Day today, so I cribbed most of my few lines from her post and its comments for the first.The floods had come and there were sharks swimming in the streets. Not that it was so different than usual, particularly around the law offices, but usually there wasn't twenty feet of water atop the pavement. Venomous snakes, spiders the size of a man's hand, stingrays and saltwater crocs... as one wit had observed, Australians didn't so much love their country as suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
After that, still having about twenty minutes of time to kill until the writing challenge time was up, I pondered the other categories. Memoir... ha, right. I don't like writing about myself (...she proclaims, on her blog...). Murder mysteries are almost equally out of my purview. But the latter I at least took a stab at, and think it turned out interesting.
It wasn't the fact that the place absolutely reeked of coffee that got me; no one sensible would expect anything less of the newest Starbucks ripoff, and my waistline wasn't so far gone yet that the smell actually made me vomit. No, what made me shiver and sweat as I stood in line for the office's order was the little ghost girl standing in the corner. Not more than five, with sweet blonde pigtails, the dark hollows of what had been her eyes were fixed on me.
Why couldn't she have found me before Tommy and I tried again?
And despite my afterward getting lambasted by the teacher, she (and the rest of the class) very much liked both of those. Not sure if I'll ever do anything with either (especially the Australia one), but I thought some of y'all might also like to read them.
