Friday, August 29, 2008

Pretending Not to Be in a Slump

Okay. Everybody onto the Denial bandwagon! We are not in a slump! Paste smiles on those faces, pick up your favorite writing implement, and get scribbling!

You missed it last night, Bob, Jenny and I had a blast writing our first confessions. I had cards with character possibilities written on them, we picked one, and got writing. It's silly, and surprisingly hard to do, but once you get in the mindset I bet a person could just crank these out. And it is writing, no matter what people think. Both Jenny and I got rejections from the Narrative First-Person Contest last week so we needed a little uplifting and the Trues are providing the fodder.

Sally, if you're reading this, thanks a bunch. I've got an old story I think I can transform into a confession and my fingers are itching to get back to the one I started last night. I haven't felt this eager to write in nearly a year.

August 28--Write about a dangerous ride--Mattie clutched the seat belt that crossed her chest with both hands and watched the telephone poles alongside the highway flicker past in a dark brown blur. The rhythmic dip of the sagging wires that connected the poles and this backwards part of the country to the rest of civilization made her feel like she was on a ship at sea, made her feel seasick. "Rob, Bobby, please slow down," she said in the calmest voice she could muster. She had the feeling that her words were sucked out of her mouth by the wind and echoed like a train whistle in the distance. She was afraid to turn her head, afraid that if she did her angry boyfriend would have turned from flesh and blood to some sort of skeletal zombie grinning its deathbed smile and pressing its bony foot to the floorboards.

Okay, then, that's weird, but hey, it's writing.
--Barbara

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