Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween Stew


Happy Halloween!

To celebrate this ghoulish holiday, let's invent a recipe for Halloween Stew. (For the record, I'm a vegetarian, so this is definitely a make-believe recipe!)

5 slithering snakes
2 timid toads
10 crispy caterpillars
1 gallon of gorilla spit
2 jars of jumping bean juice

Mix all ingredients together. Add 4 pounds of scary spiders. Season with dog dandruff.

Cook until trick-or-treaters show up at your door. Bring out your Halloween Stew, and watch everyone run away screaming.

What would you put in YOUR Halloween Stew? Happy Pumpkin Day!


Monday, October 24, 2011

Color and Music


Last week I talked about color, and this week I'm adding music. I love mixing different senses, like sight and sound, to see how that affects what we write.

I did this writing exercise in my class for adults, "Creativity for Writers," and it's a great exercise to do in a group. Six to eight is a good number.

Let's say you have 8 people. Find 8 pens with different colored ink, or 8 sharp colored pencils. Each person chooses a pen, and takes out their notebook or a big piece of paper. Find a source of music--an MP3 player, a CD player and some CDs, a computer, or the radio. Sit in a circle.

One person is in charge of the music. This exercise works best if you have different kinds of music--pop, rap, classical, country, rock, jazz, etc. You don't have to like the music. In fact, if you hate the music, that can make things more interesting!

The person in charge puts on a piece of music. While it's playing, everyone writes about the color of their ink or pencil. The person with the green pen writes about the color green. The person with the red pen writes about the color red.

What to write about? Write quickly without thinking too much, and listen to the music while you're writing. What associations do you have with that color? What does the color make you think of? Does the music tie in somehow? You don't have to write in complete sentences. Words or phrases are okay. Don't worry about spelling or punctuation.

Here's what I wrote about the color blue while a song by the 1960s band The Beach Boys was playing:

Blue perfect for the Beach Boys waves water California clouds sun the blue of the day in summer, shimmering ocean, the blue of a boy's eyes as he runs in the sand. Sparkle deep, flip flops with aqua blue flowers.

After a minute or two, the person in charge changes to a different piece of music. Everyone passes their pen to the person on the right, and takes a pen from the person on their left.

Write about your new color while the new music is playing. Again, write quickly without thinking too much. After another minute or two, switch the music and your pens. Keep writing about each color until you're all back to your original color, and write about that color again. How was your writing different this time?

For fun, read your writing out loud in the circle. What did everyone write for pink, or yellow? What colors did everyone have for the jazz piece (if you had jazz), and what did you all write about? Did the music affect the writing? Did some music make you angry, or happy?

Did any words or phrases you wrote down give you a story idea?








Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Three Colors Your Character Would Never Wear


Do you have a favorite color? (I have two, purple and green, especially when they're together.) Do you have a least favorite color? A color you hate? A color that makes you feel sick? A color you would never wear?

Guess what? Our characters have opinions about color, too. Our characters' opinions can surprise us. What if the captain of the football team loves hot pink? Or if a ballet dancer's favorite color is army-green? We can use our characters' favorite or least favorite colors to reveal something about who they are.

Think about a character from a story you've written or a story you want to write. What are three colors your character would never wear? Write a paragraph from that character's point of view telling us why.

Here's one of my characters talking:

The worst color ever is puce. Doesn't it sound horrible? In case you've never heard of puce, it's dark red-brown-purple. It's the color of throw-up after you've eaten a bowl of Spaghettios with grape juice. It's the color of that stuff on the bottom of your shoe after a dog's walked by. It's the color of mud on a rainy day after you slide into third base, and your face is slammed into the mud and it's splattered all over your teeth and hair. It's the color--but you get the idea. Don't ever wear puce. I don't.

What are three colors your character would never wear?

Monday, October 10, 2011

The Cat in the Bookstore


Hello!

I'm back and rested from my trip to Poland. I visited a ruined castle, a writer's museum, a spa town with healthy water, a medieval village, and the Old Town of Warsaw, Poland's capital. (The Old Town was completely destroyed during World War II, and was rebuilt brick by brick.)

Best of all, I got to visit family. Second best of all, I got to go into lots of bookstores. A bookstore filled with books in another language is a fun place to visit, but guess what? The books may not be in English, but a lot of other things are the same.

Like having a bookstore cat. I took a photo of this cat in a Warsaw bookstore. It was lying on a stack of art books, which makes me think the cat has good taste.

What kind of stories could this cat tell about living in a bookstore? What kind of adventures could it have? Maybe it catches a book thief. Or maybe one morning the owner doesn't show up. Or the owner does show up....with another cat.

Write a story about The Cat in the Bookstore. Use your imagination to come up with a tale (ha ha, get it?) for this handsome, book-loving cat.