#4: Childhood House/Chrissy

Ten minutes...ready/set/GO!

My grandma died in 2005 at the age of 93. On the way to the cemetary, we passed the "old farmhouse". Three generations were present in the car and each of us shared the same thought, "I remember it as being so much bigger!".

The farm consisted of acreage, several ponds stocked with catfish, a barn, a henhouse, and more than one clothesline. My daddy was the oldest of 10 and he loved his mama. His dad had died when he and his two brothers were young; grandma remarried a man with 5 children and they proceeded to add two more to the bunch. My aunt recalls a life filled with cooking, work, cleaning, work, and work.

The cellar was under the kitchen. We creeped down the narrow steps while running our hands over the damp dirt walls. Grandma sent us into the darkness to fetch potatoes, pickles and assorted preserved food. Fortunately, no one ever pulled a prank on me there--I think I'd be battling fierce claustrophobia if that had been the case. On the side porch, grandma's washer and wringer held center stage. Want a good arm workout? Try wringing the wash water from 10 sets of overalls and assorted clothing!

The kittens ruled the world of the musty, dusty barn. Hens layed eggs each morning and grandma would let me hold the cloth-lined basket. I loved listening to her encourage and praise those chickens! She was not generous with her words of love to humanity, but the hens knew their place in her heart. I knew she loved us because she baked lep cookies and left Brach's caramels in strategically placed glass cut bowls.

Wandering down the driveway towards the mailbox seemed to take an hour. We threw stones, gathered hickory nuts, and blew dandelion fluff. Gazing upon the house that day in March was bittersweet. Some things are best...remembered.

Exercise Four: Childhood House

When I was six and my baby sister was three weeks old, we were forced to move. We had been living in the upstairs of a two-family house in New Jersey and the old lady downstairs wanted to let her daughter live in our apartment. We had to find something pretty quick that was also pretty cheap. My parents scoured the area and were able to secure lodging in the cheapest house on the market in the whole county. Really. It was built in 1923, I think, and had many features to make it a staple of my childhood memories as well as my mom's nightmare house. :)

I loved the stove. First of all, it wasn't really in the kitchen. It was in a room all to itself adjoining the kitchen, much like the toilet is in a lot of master bathrooms now. Looking back I can see how cooking=hell in a place where you have to either prepare something directly on the stove with NO counter space, or fix it in another room and carry it across the house to cook it. It was such a novelty for me though. On each side of the oven there were panels that swung open to reveal drawers where we kept cereal and crackers. I have no idea what year the stove was manufactured but I don't think it was much of an upgrade from the original house. I've never seen another one like it. It made learning how to cook lots of fun.

My room was in the attic. There was a full set of real stairs leading up to it, rather than the pull down things I see now. I had a door at the bottom of the stairs that my dad cut to be a Dutch door. I had a sliding lock on my side of the bottom and the outside of the top, since they didn't like the idea that I might barricade myself in there completely. Besides, the house had no central air and was cooled by a huge attic fan that you turned on using a switch in the kitchen, so we needed to keep the door open to let the air out. I could lock the bottom half of the door to keep my sister out and escape upstairs, where I would lie on my bed and put my feet up on the slanty dormer ceiling. I could look out into the depths of the two big pine trees in our front yard and watch the sparrows peck each other across the branches. I shared the night with carpenter ants and squirrels who lived in the walls and came out to play while I tried to sleep.

When we moved in there was a fish pond in the back yard. It was about three feet deep and was stocked with fat goldfish. We kept up with it for a few months, and it was my job to feed them. I remember forgetting once until it was dark, and going out there in the pitch black because I really thought they would die before morning and it would be my fault. I took one tiny step at a time, trying to get to the edge of the water to throw the food in without falling in my own self. Scared to death. :) I was sad the day my dad drained it, but it was really fun to put the hose in there and watch all the water get sucked out onto the street. I ran back and forth to see how much was left about sixty times.

There was one tiny bathroom upstairs. It had an old-fashioned clawfooted tub and no shower. The sink was a pedestal with separate taps for hot and cold water and there was no cabinet space anywhere.

We lived there until I was 14 and I cried when we left. I wrote my name on the ceiling in my room, along with my *true love*, because you know, it was ninth grade and we were getting married. I couldn't imagine that I would ever love another house, that I could find one with character, or be happier anywhere else. I was wrong about that.

I hear the new owners have added another bathroom and put yellow siding on to replace the funky 3D kitty-litter brown shingle stuff that was there before. I bet it's not as nice now. But it's bigger. My mother told me once I was grown that it was only 1200 square feet. Full of love.

Exercise Four: Childhood House

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie, so this will be my first post with you guys. I found out about your group, and e-mailed Christa to join. I've spent the past few days lurking and reading everything! Can't wait to get to know you all.

Here's my first GOYAW contribution, penned through my splitting day-after-memorial-day-hangover:

**
The real attraction at Grandma’s house was not Grandma. And it certainly wasn’t Grandpa, whose three-martini mornings and rants at talk radio made him pretty much a non-entity in our summertime visits.

No, the reason my brother and I dressed in school clothes and swallowed our Dramamine for the big plane ride each summer was for the little country house. Perched on a slight rise in the undulating Virginia hills, it only looked simple and austere. Plain white clapboard covered its two-story frame, leaving gaps for thick windows, wavy with age. A run-down sagging porch slumped, defeated, against the foundation. Bushes and wild grasses pushed in close to the old home, as if seeking protection from the fields of emptiness around it.

But inside never felt empty. Followed by Granny’s half-blind dog, who tended to lift his leg whenever and wherever the spirit moved him, we would giggle at old photos of our mother as a toddler in the bath. Bunch yellowed lace drapes on our head to play bride. Run a grubby finger over the dusty, gold-edged china, which, like Dickens’ Miss Havisham’s, was always set out precisely on the unused dining room table, enjoyed only by the errant spider. And then, as lunchtime approached and our grandfather would begin ranting at the radio in the kitchen, we would sneak over to his recliner and filch moist green pistachio nuts from his private stash: popping them open and spitting shells at each other, devouring the fresh tangy meat. Once, I read one whole year of old Reader’s Digest magazines in a single lazy afternoon, stretched on my belly in a sunbeam sneaking in through the old bay windows, which bleached the carpet and stained the framed photos yellow.

But on days Grandpa had a five-martini morning, we went upstairs. Up a twisty wooden staircase, lined with mildewed military certificates hung crookedly in three-penny frames, were three small bedrooms, each overstuffed with dark Victorian furniture and Turkish rugs. This was where the ghosts roamed at night, where my cousins and I – piled up in a double bed like a pile of puppies – would wield an old flashlight for protection from the mysteries of the dark corners and branches scratching on the warped glass windows. In the day, the old armoires dropped their threatening nighttime façade, and became, instead, perfect places for hiding or digging through decades of old fashions: hats crusted with little pearls, gossamer-thin scarves, a mangy fur stole. Memories of a time when Grandpa was a mustached military officer and Grandma was a thin dainty arm ornament. A time when the empty fields were promises, and the house a dream come true.

My house growing up

I lived in a brown and gold 3 story victorian, atop a hill, on the outskirts of Baltimore City. I loved that house more than I thought was humanly possible! Some of the best days of my childhood were spent running through the beautifaul garden my father had planted across the front and down one entire side of the house. There were trees, shrubs, flowers of every size and color, a pond, and a path that led you from the front of the house to the back. My father had even dug out a corner cubby with step seating that was surrounded by the trees and hedges on three sides and the pond on the fourth. It was magical. My friends and I used to call it 'the jungle'.

Tall hedges across the front and down the two sides allowed for privacy from the street and from the neighbors on either side. My favorite part of the hedge was the honeysuckle growing in it. Little pops of color peeking out from the green leaves, and the smell! Heaven on earth is the only way to describe it. To this day, every time I smell honeysuckle I think back to summer days when I was a girl.

We had an above ground pool in the back and a fort that my grandfather had built when I was very young. Everyone in the neighborhood loved to come to my house in the summer time. Whether it was just hanging out on the porch swing, playing capture the flag in the yard, playing army and spies in the garden and fort, or swimming in the pool all day and all night, I couldn't have asked for a better place to grow up.

I'll bite on the house exercise- great one Kep!

I don't remember why I was standing there, what I was waiting for. But the sunshine was warm on my cheeks, a welcome feeling in the cold autumn air in this foreign land. I could smell the neighbor baking bread, something German, something authentic, something my young taste buds couldn't yet appreciate. The building we lived in looked to be blue from the ground up to about four feet- but it wasn't paint. It was tiny little pieces of glass in an infinity of shades of blue. Like glitter, but bigger. I stood there, picking at them. My nail could easily dig one loose, I'd turn it around in my hand and then watch as it fell to the ground near my shoes. It was neat- this old apartment building in this old town. The language was beautiful, boisterous- the German neighbors could be heard chatting late into the evening. I must have been the age my son is now, barely seven. It was just one of the countless places I would live in my life, but I never minded the moving. I heard my mothers voice calling me to come inside, and as I ascend the few steps and enter the apartment, I can look down the hall and see that I am home.

Inside the building that had been dipped in blue glitter, in our apartment, hung a tapestry acquired by my mother in the East before I was born. It is of a lion and a lioness, looking into the distance past a watering hole, perhaps watching their young. It's coloring is beautiful in a palacial sort of way- old deep blues and magenta and gold. It would occur to me years later that of all the things my mom could leave me, I wanted that tapestry. Wherever we moved, wherever we rested our heads for more than month or two, that tapestry was hung on a prominent wall. It's what made Bonn, Vogelweh, Robins Air Force Base, two apartments in Gaeta, Italy, and two houses in New Mexico feel like home. It endured my childhood, my teenage years, and my flight from the nest. And now it is hung in the home that welcomes my children, and like me, that tapestry will be part of the earliest memories they have of feeling at home.

Third Person Exercise

Figured I better catch up before I jump in with new stuff. :)

It was too quiet in the playroom. The silence registered as she realized the only sound she could hear was the toaster popping up. Where were the boys? Their breakfast was ready, which was a good thing. However, their lack of noise indicated a definite problem. She stuck her head through the doorway to try to catch them in the act of whatever mayhem they were currently causing.

Tommy was lying on the floor in front of the breaker box. Timmy was standing flat on his brother's back and gazing in wonder at the multitude of switches before his eyes. So many pretty buttons to push. Tommy was whispering, "Hurry up, my turn, wanna see!"

She crept up behind her angels and called, "Waffles are ready!"

Timmy leaped in terror, fell, and landed directly on his brother's head. As they both cried, she frog-marched them to the table and set them up with waffles and applesauce. She wondered whether giving them a lecture would be at all successful. Probably not. In fact, she had to admit she was a bit impressed by their ingenuity. At four she wouldn't have thought to stand on her sister Kate, nor would Kate have allowed such a thing. She decided to just let it go for once.

The rest of the morning flew by in a whirlwind of fingerpainting, tormenting the cat, mopping the kitchen floor, eating lunch, and mopping the floor again. Finally the boys were both down for a nap. She flopped herself down on the couch and turned on the tv. Nothing. Frowning, she picked up the phone to call her husband, since he was the resident expert on such matters. No dial tone. Hmm. Instant messaging wasn't working. Error 794: Your computer is not currently connected to the internet.

Dammit!, she thought. Okay, what would he tell me to do? She went to the office and unplugged the router, carefully resetting it. Still nothing.

After trying everything she could think of, she remembered Timmy standing at the breaker box that morning. Upon going to look, sure enough, one switch was flipped. No lights are off though, she wondered, what circuit is this? She flipped it back on and the freezer hummed back to life. Her heart sinking, she looked at the left wall of her new playroom. The electrician had run all the wires through one new wall and created a new circuit. Not much was running off this one... just the Verizon box, which powered the tv, phone, and internet, and her giant freezer.

She opened the freezer and was met with a small lake of ice water, melting fish sticks, and wilted pastry crust. Oprah's gonna have to wait, she thought, because now I have work to do.

Dammit.

Next Exercise... Is it 4?

I've lost track of what number we're on. But I want to write something new, and I see cmommy does too. So I'll give out homework. Is that okay? I'm not sure if Christa was waiting until we all did the old ones, and if we're supposed to be putting new stuff out there. If I'm out of bounds, delete it or chastise me. But until then.... :)

I want to know about a favorite house from your childhood. It can be your house, grandma's, your best friend down the street, whatever. Work on adding all five senses and think back to why it was cool when you were little. Take ten minutes and just do it. :) As much detail as possible. I'll post mine soon.

I want homework!

Christa--whine--pleeaasssee, can we have an assignment? ;-)

Exciting news!

I just received an e-mail notifying me I'm a finalist in the Maryland Writers' Association novel Contest! AND, seeing as they have asked me for my last 25 pages (in addition to the first 25 and synopsis that I sent for the original entry) that only means one thing - I'm tied for first place!

I wanted to share my exciting news, seeing as I'm going crazy with joy, right now!!

Cmommy in 3rd person

Exercise #2--sorry for the delay!

The hum of the fridge was a nice background noise for the clicking keys on the laptop. Chrissy hadn't come near the computer the entire weekend. Ever since Thrusday, when the boy had become a teen and the baby had left behind the preschooler, she'd been in a funk. Brain-fog had clouded her reasoning and slowed her reflexes. Exercise was out of the question, injury being a real possibility. An unclear focus could destroy the balance needed for yoga.

She sighed and paused, staring at the muted screen. If the iTunes library wasn't so mixed up, maybe she could find a soundtrack to accompany her work. There were too many strange, foreign songs on the list: hip-hop, rap, alternative. The order followed no rationale. Was there an alphabetical command to the system? A 'date added' button? Chrissy didn't know. Although this was exactly the kind of inane, useless tangent that she had been veering off into lately, she didn't have the drive to follow it now. A more serious destination was on her agenda. The writing exercise was long overdue.

Everyone else on the Writing Blog had a manuscript in the process of being birthed. She had nothing, really. Not even an ovum of a story. Her personal blog had attracted a precious handful of new friends. Their talent inspired and amazed her. She eagerly anticipated the chapters that were springing from Christa's imagination, couldn't wait to find an entire hour to finish reading Steph's story. But, if there was a book inside of her, Chrissy didn't have possession of the map that would take her to the treasure. Maybe one existed. Maybe it didn't.

(time's up!)

Fellowship

Just an opportunity I thought I'd share.

My blurb...

I'll participate....

Broken Curses is a literary masterpiece wherein past meets present through a centuries-old hex that plagues the decendants of a beautiful young maidservant.

There's a plane that flies itself, a desperate housewife and several mice with anxiety disorders.

Not really.

But there is a bright young (read:HOT) Italian geniologist that seeks out the heir of the curse, and in his quest to free the young woman whose fate is sealed by the love affair that doomed her, he finds himself entangled in the spell. Together they travel to Spain and follow a trail of sorcery that leads them back to the beginning....

My blurb...Charity

Okay okay okay okay....
Here is my book blurb...not anything polished and ready for a bookcover, but it could be worse.

Going back home after years of military service, Lori begins her new job as an onsite stable caretaker. She thought she would be able to easily step back into life at the stables but finds opposition at ever turn in the form of vicious, self serving, promiscuous stable hand, and a park ranger that she can't get rid of, but then again doesn't want to miss either.

Accidents are happening at the stables and the wildlife rangers that patrol the park grounds are responsible for the investigations. Chris Owens is tasked with the job of finding out if these really are just accidents or is someone causing trouble that could get someone hurt, or even killed. His job would be a lot easier if he could just keep his distance from the new caretaker.

*I know it is kinda choppy and blah, but it is a new story and I am still working on it in chunks. But that is a very general blurb.

Blogvision

I envision GET OF YOUR ASS AND WRITE as a blog wherein the writing exercises are completed by all contributing members, even some uncool non-members. You're supposed to be getting off your asses and writing, and every time I check the blog I think, 'I can't wait to see what everyone posts!'. But no. You guys are just teasing me. There was decent response to exercise 1, the list. Not so much for exercise 1.5, the alliteration one, or what I view as exercise #2, the third person scene. Then Steph threw in #4, THE BLURB, which I must admit I have not done, because I AM AFRAID. Hows about THIS: If your name appears on the side and you have not yet done each one, take a few minutes and FORCE yourself to complete each one. And if you are getting confused at who did what like me, then put your name and the exercise number in the heading. But the point is, WRITE! Right NOW! Now. GO.


Quit reading this and WRITE!






Dang it, go to your dashboard and click NEW POST.



Is it that difficult?????





No, it's not!





QUIT reading this and go WRITE!

I Didn't Do It On Purpose

It's a very surreal experience to realize you've just locked yourself out of your own home, and your children and husband are still inside and you get a happy little feeling knowing that you're outside, and it's cool out and there are a couple of birds chirping at dusk and you can breathe a little easier and you think, "Wow, maybe I just won't go back inside."

Blurb for my book

Minerva was smart. After all she had a PhD in Mathematics from MIT. She had a low-level job in the intelligence community in Washington D.C. So if she was so smart, how come she was on the run from assorted intelligence agencies and various law enforcement agencies?

All she had done was a small favor for Carlos, an intelligence agent who worked at USBI with her. He wanted her to dig up information about a theft from a military base in Georgia. She had done similar favors for him before. No problem, right?

She gets fired, her apartment is ransacked and her computers stolen, and she is on the run with Carlos, the man she has had a crush on for years. Carlos wants her to finish investigating the theft because the reasons for the theft have major international implications.

If that wasn't enough, she is being shadowed by a mysterious tall, blond guy from an unknown intellience agency. She is inexplicably attracted to this guy. He wants her to finish the investigation, too.

With the whole force of the federal government hot on her trail, not to mention the bad guys, Minerva chases clues from Washington D.C. to New Orleans. She's gone from dateless to having two hot guys and becoming the most wanted woman in the country.

Blurb, etc.

Yes, Stephanie, I'm on the ChickLit loop. I saw your post about this site, and here I am. Thanks for the invitation to the group, all! As for my MS, the working title is "Whole of the Moon", but we all know how that goes.

Just when it seems Cordelia Kelley is at a good place in her life, everything is thrown into a tailspin. For as long as she can remember, her dream has been to save enough money to open her own clothing boutique and, if she's lucky, have a hot man by her side. So, when an unknown benefactor gives her a boat load of 'no strings attached' money to open her store, and she has not one but two amazing men in her life, she doesn't know what to do.

I'm still working on the perfect pitch/ blurb, so I may have more to add to that, or change it, at a later date!

I'm on my secondish into third set of revisions, and hopefully am getting close to start subbing it!

Exercise #4 Are we on Four? Nope It's Exercise #3

Okay, I'll try to come up with something.... Let's see....
Hmmmm.... Okay, it's pretty bad when you can't even think of a exercise to post.

OK! Well, I'm assuming everyone on here is a writer, right? So, if you don't already have one prepared, write your blurb on what your book is about. Fashion it like the back or inside-cover copy.

I'll do mine later.

Hey, I participated, didn't I?

How many of you came over from Yahoo Chick Lit? Thanks for joining!
Manic Mom / Steph

Exercise #3

Bryce knew what they were doing wasn't very smart, but she went along anyway. Sasha and Katie talked her into going, and she was excited at first. Now she wasn't so sure.

As if the woods they were walking through weren't dark enough, the gathering clouds were making it feel like night was settling in on them.

She caught up to Sasha so that she could reach into the bag on her back. She decided the only thing that was going to get her through this was a little liquid courage. Then again, that probably wasn't making their outing any safer. She zipped Sasha's bag up and cracked open the beer can.

"It's about time you started to loosen up!", Katie quipped, as Bryce took her first sip. "I think I can see the clearing now. Come on, before this storm gets here"!

No sooner had the words left Katie's lips did the girls hear the first clap of thunder. As they made their way to the rock ledge, a bolt of lightning blazed across the sky.

"Ok, we're going to have to make this quick", Sasha told them as she sat the bag on the ground and began peeling off her t-shirt and shorts. Bryce walked over to where Sasha was standing and looked down.

There, below, was the resevoir they were about to jump into. It was something they had talked about doing time and again, but now the time had come. The "cliffs', as everyone called them were rock ledges that stuck about fifteen feet over the water. One ledge was appoximately twenty feet high; the other was thirty five.

Another clap of thunder startled the girls. They all looked at one another. They had come this far; had talked about it so many times. It was now or never. Bryce pulled her t-shirt off and walked to the edge of the lower cliff. She turned towards Sasha and Katie, smiled and jumped, feet first.

The next thing she new, she was swimming to the surface of the water. It was cool and refreshing, and completely exhilerating. "Do it! Come on! It's great!", she yelled up to her friends that were still standing there, gaping at her. She swam out of the way, towards the shore, so she could watch her friends jump.

As they made their way up from the depths of the resevoir, she smiled to herself. She had beaten them to the punch.

They each made one more jump before the storm chased them out of the water. Grabbing their clothes, they headed back to the path that would lead them to their car. Very satisfied with themselves, and their bold feat, they drove to a friend's house to recount their daring adventures to anyone who would listen.

hello! My name is Kay. I just joined about thirty seconds ago. Thanks for the invite! I don't have time to post anything really good--I am supposed to be leavign for work right at this very minute. I will post some nice stuff tonight! Hope to be able to contribute and get off my ass!

Thank you all...

for your response and WELCOME everyone!!! Now that you are part of the club, in order to be considered cool, you must actually POST SOMETHING!!! Because after all it is the "Get Off Your Ass and Write Club" not the "Lurking on Just Another Blog Club".

So as self-appointed president of this diddy, to make it easier I'll number the exercises as I post them. Then, just title your contribution "Exercise # from (insert name here)." Or whatever. I'm not much of a dictator, so do whatever you want, just WRITE!

For reference:

Exercise 1: Pick a 'scenario question' and give it 20 answers. No less, but more if you are not exhausted.
Exercise 2: Write a scene from you life in third person, free-write it with as little editing as possible and in 15 minutes. (Not less but a little more if you are on a roll.)

Christa's lesson of the day:

I once read somewhere that any task, whether you love it or hate it, has a 'roller coaster' effect. You start uphill, hating every moment. Then you reach a crest where it becomes bearable. Then you coast. That's why, whether you are writing, or (in my case) calling clients or doing dishes or laundry, it's so easy to put it off. You dread that uphill climb, rarely realizing that there is a downhill slide to it. So, in the words of the much beloved by my iPod Goo Goo Dolls... "just slide...."

Christa- Third Person Scene

It's exactly 11:46 according to my Toshiba...

Christa was doing her best to ignore the high-pitched winey wailing of the three-year-old in the car seat behind her. She'd stopped at the car wash earlier that day, pitching the trash that seemed to magically appear ont he floorboards of the Expedition and raising the third-row seats, mistakenly believing that this would solve the problem. Even though the seven-year-old was sequestered to the third-row, he still managed to antagonize his sister into a fit. She gripped the wheel a little tighter and punched the keys on the Sirius radio unit.

November Rain.

Why had that been their song? She had avoided this song for the last ten years, avoided the memories that it conjured up, avoided the band that sang it. But today it usurped the arguing and rendered her mind unaware of the kids in the car. Why?

There were plenty of songs, plenty of sights- even smells that brought back memories of him. But normally there were flashes here and there, with little contemplation of the past. Usually just a moment of life that had been spent, of which the memory could produce a smile. There were plenty of firsts with him, for both of them. But this song... it was one of theirs, and she couldn't remember why.

And then the memory came back clearly, nearly effortlessly. They sat on the bleachers of an obscure game field, done with their individual events. He ran the mile, she did the long jump. There was nothing left but to watch their teammates and get back on the bus. So they sat there, the Mediterranean sun high, the breeze light. They'd been sharing his Walk-man for weeks, listening to mixes they made for each other. Somehow their conversation turned to their feelings, and with the tinny sound of November Rain in the backdrop, he told her that he loved her. The first time anyone not related to her had spoken these words to her. And the first time she gave her heart to a boy.

Oddly enough, it was November nearly two years later that she had taken it back. The velosa-raptor-like screech from the back seat brought her back from that moment in time, and she smiled. Someday her daughter would find her first love, and by then she'd be the adult that would be convinced it was all hormonal. And she would try to remember what young love was like, real love. Because she did love him, and somewhere in a piece of her heart she always would. It wasn't that he didn't deserve to have her heart, it wasn't that he didn't love her anymore or she didn't love him- it ended in November because it wouldn't last. They were too wrapped up in each other to make real decisions about their future. She had an acceptance letter from the University of Florida and he would have followed. And that would have been the worst thing she could have let him do.

So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
Even cold November rain...

Exercise #2

Write a scene from your life in third person. Change names if need be to protect the innocent. The catch is to give yourself fifteen minutes to freewrite the scene. Don't edit it. Let it come out just as you type it. I'll post my contribution...

Fun with ALLITERATION

Take the first letter of your first name and contstruct a sentence with words that start with that letter ONLY.

"Christa's cactus cries considering calculus corrections."

Welcome to the first writing exercise here at GOYAW!!!

First, if you know me and I know you, or even if I don't know you, and you want to join to write, email me! My address is in the sidebar. I would love for people who are interested in participating to become members so you can post your musings instead of just leaving them in comments. I also envision a writing community where everyone suggests different writing exercises, offers links to people like This Guy, and in general is all about writing, wanting to write, writers block and the eccentric tendencies of writers to not do the thing they love- write.

So write here. Write now.

I'll start with my favorite exercise... the LIST.

Read the questions, pick ONE and come up with at least twenty answers. This exercise doesn't work if you don't get close to twenty- the answers from 15 to 20 are the ones you could use as a plot in a novel- they are going to be the fresh, original ideas that only you come up with. Answers 1 thru 10 are typically the most obvious and would be the same as what someone else has come up with.

Questions:

* Why would a woman with long, dark, beautiful hair cut it off and dye it blonde?
* Why would a man take a new route to work?
* What might cause a family of five to move to a foreign country?
* Your main character goes crazy and walks into his place of employment with a bomb strapped to himself. What happened?
* A man is in love with a woman he just met, but she abhors him. Why?
* After ten years of marriage, a woman empties her bank account and vanishes into the night, leaving 2 small kids and a loving husband. Why?

OR MAKE UP YOUR OWN.

Here's mine:

I'm choosing why a man would choose a new route to go to work:

1. He's bored with the old route.
2. He's having an affair and the object of the affair lives on that route.
3. He's stalking a coworker.
4. He's following his teenage kid, whom he believes is selling drugs.
5. The old route has potholes.
6. They installed one too many lights on the old route.
7. He's dumb and he thinks it's a shortcut.
8. (ugh, struggling...) The new route goes by a house he'd like to buy for his wife.
9. He's being followed by the CIA.
10. He's being followed by the mafia.
11. He read somewhere that you should change up your routines so as not to be targeted by identity thieves.
12. He's a pervert, and there's more kids in the neighborhood that the new route goes through.
13. He's on a diet and there is a McDonald's on the old route, and he's weak.
14. He heard that there's a meth lab on the new route and he's a new addict, spending his family's savings to feed the habit.
15. (ugh, again....) He's trying to get fired, and since he is normally a punctual person, the extra five miles makes him ten minutes late.
16. A co-worker he hates got his promotion, and that co-worker always takes the same route as the man. The man is afraid that he might pull the gun out of the glove comartment and shoot at the coworker if he sees him on the road.
17. They built a Krispy Kreme on the new route, and he's not on a diet.
18. There's a state trooper that hangs out in a speed trap on the old route, and the guy already has 4 speeding tickets and can't afford for his insurance to go up again.
19. He bikes to work, and he's avoiding a viscious oversized poodle that haunts the old route.
20. Hmmm, this one is tough.