Writing Challenge: Week 2

What do a toaster, a Komodo dragon and a tea kettle have in common?

They are all subjects of the pieces that resulted from this week's writing exercises.

The Exercises:

• My Pet by Alison Lurie
• Surrealism Exercise, or Thinking Outside the Box by Laurie Foos
• Birth of a Story in an Hour or Less by Crystal Wilkinson

For My Pet I wrote a passage from the POV of one of my characters who happens to have a pet Komodo dragon.  For Surrealism I used the exercise's formula and made the prompt:  "After a night of cramming, she discovered that her hand had grown a tea kettle."  For Birth of a Story, I used two of my characters, one of whom was reincarnated as a toaster.

 The Results:



Overall, not so good.  For starters, I only got through three exercises this week, rather than my target of seven.  The bigger disappointment, though, was that of the three exercises, only one actually felt like it sparked something and it was the one where I didn't try to use characters from my current project.

Usually I like using the "two birds, one stone" method with writing exercises.  I use them to warm up, but I tend to tweak the prompt or assignment so that it allows me to use characters I'm already writing about.  Usually this works.  In fact, a lot of times I get material out of these exercises that I can later add to the book in some way.  At the very least, though, these exercises usually end up helping me understand my characters better.  This week, that totally didn't happen.

In the end, My Pet and Birth of a Story will have to get do-overs so they don't count toward the tally.  I better get my act together because the days are ticking away.

iggi says...

The Tally:

Exercises Remaining: 83

Days Left: 78