Tag Archives: writing group

Writing Exercise: Pandora’s Random Box

My writing group met yesterday, and, as we love to do, before we got down to the business of being awesome and motivating each other to set new and challenging goals, we did a few group exercises.  Yesterday’s pen-pusher was an old favorite: using the next song to pop up on Pandora as a prompt, you use its title as the title of your piece, then write whatever falls out of your head while we listen to the song.  Is there nothing Pat Benatar can’t do?

“Shadows of the Night”

I feel like an ass falling offa these platform shoes, but in for a penny… I don’t know whose stupid idea this was, or where this yellow mullet wig came from, but here we are, every one of us taller than 6’2, in leather bustier drag waiting to get into this club.  All very underground, very “now” according to J, which doesn’t explain the 80s throwback motif of the line, most of whom will learn about the 80s in History class and probably think a Golden Girl is some kind of glittery tequila shot. But they’re liking the look of our crowd and threatening to let us in, when really all I want is to climb down offa these shoes and go eat some Thai food.

“Guess Who?”

I know there’s somebody out there, except of course there isn’t.  It’s those cats again.  And that mariachi band up the street that thinks “midnight” is English for “start practicing.”  The funny thing is, there’s always so much shit going on back there that Allen could stalk me and lie in wait if he wanted to.  But he doesn’t have the guts, and whatever we had wasn’t worth all that.

Writing Exercise: First Meeting

Inspired (like so many writers before us) by Natalie Goldberg, my writing group used a prompt from her (amazing) book Old Friend From Far Away to get the blood-and-ink flowing when we met this week.  We wrote off the top of our heads for ten minutes on the topic of “First Meetings.”  A snippet of what fell out of me follows:

Me with no doorbell, you with no phone–we wanted to meet, it was just going to take some doing.  Remember pay phones?  There’s one across the street by the Popeye’s.  Call me, I’ll come let you in.

Except where are you?  I want to go down and look for you, but don’t dare leave the phone, so I end up in the hallway on the stairs, from which I can see precisely nothing.  Finally the suspense is killing me–I go out on the street in search of you.  You’re not banging on the door, you’re probably looking for parking.  Will I know you if I see you?  I’ve only seen your face–are you short or tall or wearing a name tag?

Up the street, a block away, you’re crossing the street.  We’ve never met and I can’t make out your face, but I know it’s you.  At least, it better be you, because I’m looking at the man I’m gonna marry.