February 12th, 2009

Writing Exercises: Newspaper Character Sketches

Using a daily newspaper (or internet variants thereof), do any or all of the following:

–write a typical day’s schedule for one of the letters-to-the-editor writers
–write a resume for a baby listed on the Births page, 30 years in the future
–write a holiday-greeting letter for one of the people listed in the Personals/Matchmakers pages
–write a Facebook profile for someone who posted one of the classifieds under “Misc.”

I’ll post whatever I come up with for this exercise in a couple days!

I don’t know if you drive / if you love the ground beneath you
RR

February 7th, 2009

One-Moment Exercise–Results

(10 minute freewrite on the prompt in the last post, unedited)

He’s still tasting the goddamn date square. It’s been over an hour and some fierce regret, but it still pastes his tongue, his gums above his wisdom teeth. He is dying for a sip of water, has been for a while, but he didn’t dare take a finger off the wheel with Iz watching, and the rental-car office is so tiny and wobbly looking it seems like it might not even have running water. Plus, every time the clerk looks up from the computer, the file, the computer, he is glaring at them. At them both, but Judge feels like the kid can sense it was Judge behind the wheel when they hit the median, though he wouldn’t go as far to say “at fault.” Judge wouldn’t go that far at all.

It’s hot in Ohio. It was hot in Ontario too, but in that province it was also dawn, which gave your clothes some clearance from your body. Now everything is slicked tight, even the baggy canvas of his shorts, even the thin cotton of the street-stand t-shirt that says, Fest. It is a generic t-shirt, bought for four-dollars in Outremont when he spilled red wine at a party and ran downstairs to see if he could by a new one. For four dollars, he didn’t care what fest, all though here, in Ohio, with the rubber-decal letters sweating to the hair on his chest, he panics briefly that someone might ask him. Not Iz, of course; Iz was at the party.

She also smells like date squares, which is not helping anything, the cinnamon-fruit dust that hangs in the shared air between them. And she stands so distant from him, while firmly occupying the same wicket at the wood-veneer desk. She is keeping her distance? Or she is trying not to touch in the confined space where to touch means to stick, and sweat.

Why is the clerk not sweating? How can a modern business establishment not be air-conditioned? What is wrong with Ohio? The shallow bowls around the kid’s eyes are not even shiny, his forehead dry, his tight small braids tapering neatly to the back of his neck. The clicks of the computer are dry and precise, too, but in Judge’s mind, each one is thousands of dollars.

February 6th, 2009

Exercise–The Single Moment One

Wednesday evening I went to the info session/meeting/dinner for me and my writing/teaching/administrating colleagues at SWAT/Now Hear This. It was very exciting/friendly/delicious/scary, because very very soon, I’m going to be entrusted with some actual high-school students, and expected to teach them something, and that will likely be every adjective mentioned above (except delicious).

In an effort to calm down, I will of course be over-preparing. I have a wealth of classroom experience from the other side, because I have had so many good writing teachers the past 11 years or so. So I will be culling through memories and notebooks, trying to find what helped me most. I’ll also be asking around to find such things that helped *other* writers–if you have recommendations or fond memories (or, in fact, bitter memories that you would like me avert for future generations) please drop me a line/comment.

I actually used to love writing exercises, and find they work well in a classroom, where everyone’s used to obeying orders, and it’s tough to order anyone to “think freely.” Exercises are a trick to free you up in tight parameters, and to that end, usually they are timed. I prefer 10 minutes for the ones I’ll be running, but if you are playing along at home, obviously I won’t be checking your work!!

Single-Moment Exercise
Describe a single moment in the life of a character. It could be someone in a piece you’ve been working on and got stuck in, or someone you just invented clean out of your head. If you are really stuck, use yourself, right now. Describe all five senses as the character is experiencing them: the taste in her mouth, the feel of his clothes, temperature, comfort-level, smells, feeling of health or illness, what’s in her field of vision/aural landscape, and of course what’s on his mind. Do not move forward into ramifications–these are unknown–and try to stay away from flashback unless the character is dwelling on the past. Stick to immediate perception as much as possible.
Ok, go!
I’ll put up my exericse on the weekend, in case anyone’s curious.

Outside the thunder’s jealous / of the way you shake
RR