Liz’s World

Here’s a cool link I found:

http://www.cmmayo.com/d5mwe.html

There’s a 5-minute writing exercise for every day of the year. For each day, there’s a little blurb like to start a story. So, you take the blurb and use it to write for 5 minutes straight without stopping. It’s really for writing stories, but I think it would help anyone improve their writing. I found the one for today, and here it is:

October 22 “Falling Mirror”

Today’s exercise is courtesy of Christine Boyka Kluge, a poet and visual artist who lives in North Salem, New York.

Imagine a mirror falling. Into a canyon, into a river, onto a tile floor. Is it an antique hand mirror framed with silver roses, a faceted disco ball, or a fitting room triptych, flapping through space? Was it accidentally thrown? Is the owner of the mirror beautiful and vain, or grotesque and horrified? Perhaps the owner isn’t even human. Is it a flawed angel, an escaped gorilla, a mystified alien? View the world in reflected fragments, be the eye of the mirror as it falls. What scenes are captured as it plummets /drifts / explodes? How do these images impact / “reflect” the mirror’s owner?

Here’s what I wrote:

I am a mirror, falling to the ground. I am falling from a great height, and I turn and turn and turn as I fall. I’m falling from the top of a tree. I can see the sky reflect on my surface as I face upwards, and then the dark ground, getting closer, as I face downward. And then upward, where I came from. In the tree, a person. Now down again, facing the ground, where the dry leaves cover the pine needles and the dirt. Now up again. It’s a skydiver, because I can see the brightly colored parachute tangled in the tree. Now the tree branches crash into me as I fall. I am cracking. Leaves, birds, bark, brush, all is reflected in me. I catch the light. Yes, that’s what I’m for, to catch the light, to signal someone, so that the skydiver can be rescued. I cannot control my fall, I can only hope that I’ll land face-upward, that I’ll reflect the bit of sunlight that will bring help soon enough.

Wow, that was kind of a cool experience. Try it! Let me know what you write… and let me know what you think of my writing, too.

I guess in studying for the GED, I realized that I want to be a better writer. I mean, it helped me in my job, and in looking for a new job, and even in writing letters to my kids. One way to become a better writer is to write this blog. Like Mr. Williams said, write a little every day. I’m going to try that, and try to give you some help with writing, too. Let me know what writing questions you have in the comments section.

One thing Mr. Williams talked about is descriptive writing, so I thought I’d try that. Here’s the exercise: look out your window or sit on your front porch, and write a paragraph describing it, using words that talk about what you see, hear, smell, and feel.

Here’s my paragraph:

My front porch has a white fence around it. Sitting in the little enclosure, on a cushioned white chair, I can smell the jasmine flowers blooming in front of the porch. They’re little white stars on a green background, and I planted them myself twenty years ago and watched them grow. The soft wind feels nice on my face, and it caries the flower smell and the smell of cut grass to me. I can hear the sound of traffic in the distance and little rustling sounds of the leaves. Then, a big flock of noisy birds flies in, chatter, chatter, chatter! They land on my tree and drive me indoors.

Did you notice what words describe smells, sounds, sights, and feels of things?

Try writing your own paragraph, and post it in the comments section!