Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Chocolate and Paper

Take a bar of your favorite chocolate. I prefer working with the Hershey's bars, you know the easily breakable ones? Yeah. Break it up into pieces.

Grab a pen and a piece of paper, or a notebook.

Get ready for the instructions:

Smell the chocolate. Feel the pattern of the chocolate piece. When you are satisfied, put the small piece of chocolate on your tongue. DO NOT CHEW THE CHOCOLATE! Let the chocolate slowly melt on your tongue. Taste it.

As the chocolate melts, write whatever comes to mind. Whether you make a list, or a story, write anything that comes to mind. It could be about dragons, death, birth, whatever. Just write it.

Once the first piece of chocolate is gone, take another.

When the entire chocolate bar is gone, stop writing.

If you made a list, develop it into a story. If you wrote a story, wait a few days then continue it.


I learned this when I went to Accepted Students Day at my college. It's a surrealism exercise. I find that chocolate helps with my writing. I am going to have a bar of chocolate every time that I write. It might help me get over the writers block.

Another exercise that we did was a "coin flip" exercise. Find a random word, if there is a website that will give you a random word, great! Take that word and start your story with it. Keep writing. When you feel as though your story is coming to a close, get another random word. This second word is the word that is the last word of the story. I had two words that I had never heard of in my life before... hopefully this doesn't happen to you.

Try it. Maybe it will help you, too!

~Am

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Babysitting

I was given this idea to write this while I was babysitting my boss's kids.

Unfortunately, I do have some issues with one of her daughters. The oldest is a special needs child. She cannot speak that well and tends to communicate with those around her by using sign language.

I do not know sign language.

When she put in the Signing Time DVD, I was a little hesitant that her two year old sister wouldn't like it. However, as I watched, the little one was signing along with the DVD.

It got me to thinking: everyone has a different way of communicating. There are different languages: like English, French, Spanish, etc.

However, a language that not many people can understand is body language. A simple movement of the hands can be an entire story that nobody can understand. I don't know many words in sign language, but I do wish to know more. However, it will be difficult to learn.

I think that communication is difficult with certain people, but one just has to learn to accept and learn to communicate back with the one that they have had problems communicating with in the past.

SIDE NOTE: The two girls I was watching love Dora the Explorer. If you follow me on Twitter, ( http://twitter.com/AmWritingDesk ) you may have noticed my comments about Dora and Boots... don't worry about that. Oh, and that is such a nasty show when you think about it. The "Super Babies" episode was on tonight and Boots literally said "Good job super blowing!" Well, I'm not sure if it was just me, but my mind went into the gutter immediately. 


~Am

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Writing

When I look back to my writing that I had done in first grade, it makes me smile.
The assignment: write a two page story about anything.

I didn't listen to my teacher. At all.

Twenty seven pages later, I had a story about a horse that turned into a Pegasus, which was entered into a race and won by flying across the finish line. Literally.

I feel like this was the start of my writing, but I can't be sure. Ever since, I've been scribbling short phrases and even just a single word on the corners of my music folders, my classwork, and I have thirteen notebooks with excerpts of my writing.

Yeah, well, I think my career is going to have something to do with writing...

I went up to the school of my dreams yesterday, Chester College, for accepted students day. When we split off into majors, twelve other girls and one guy stood up and joined me into the Creative Writing group. I know that this is my future, and I can't wait to go there on August 26th.

Oh, and the inspiration to the story/novel I am writing is an idea that my best friend, Kaitlin, came up with. I believe that as a fellow writer, she is the one who helps me write.

And that is my history...

~Am