A Short Story

Posted on July 23, 2005

In the Creative Writing class, we are now in the Short Story section. There have been some pretty good exercises in it. We’ve had to create three short stories, one of which will be graded.

For the first story, the teacher brought in a painting she picked up in Hungary. We had to create a story based on the painting. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words (the teacher also hates cliches, LOL).

The second story had to be based on an event in our lives. Mine was pretty disgusting and graphic – about the first time I got really, really drunk. It was humbling, and the story was pretty… well I was watching “The Exorcist” when I wrote it, so you get the picture.

The last story was to be based on an exercise. We started out talking about opening sentences – how to hook people into reading further, so for the exercise we had to come up with five opening lines – out of thin air, with no idea what the story might be, or even if a story existed. Next, we had to pick our favorite of the lines, take two words from that sentence and use them to build a second sentence. Once we had that, we were supposed to write a third sentence. When she told us to write the third sentence, I just kept going and before I knew it I had a couple of paragraphs.

Below it the untitled short story from the third exercise. This is the one I will be turning in for a grade, although it will have to have some revisions, since it was a first draft.

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London, July 2005

Posted on July 7, 2005

I am a semi news junkie. When something big happens, I am rapt with attention. If I watched TV I would be glued to it. Thus it is, I have been following the terrorist bombings in London. There isn’t much for me to say, except I have people in my prayers, and I hope to hear from my cousin soon (she maried an English guy and lives in Belgium, but I imagine she still visits London on occassion).

I think the best response I have seen so far was posted by The London News Review. Follow the link, or read below.
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Semi-daily journal

Posted on July 4, 2005

I haven’t been doing well with keeping up the daily journal, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. Yesterday, I created a Wikipedia entry on cornea transplants. IMHO, it’s a pretty good summary about the surgery, without getting into all the nuts and bolts of it. Sometime in the future, I hope to add an image or two, maybe showing a “before and after” for the procedure.

We’ve had some gorgeous weather over the past few days. On Saturday, it was sunny and in the seventies. I had planned on doing some writing first thing in the day, but I procrastinated a bit and went for a stroll. What I intended on being a short walk of half-an-hour or so truned into a fairly long trek of a few hours. It was just so nice out, I just started wandering the streets, looking at the cool old houses.

Another reason for the walk is my cousin is getting married in California at the end of the month. She is having an outdoor, Hawaiian themed wedding where people will wear shorts, sandals, and such. My legs are about as pale as can be, so I hoped that by going on the walk, I might get some color on them. Not quite. I am getting some color on them, but what I really ended up doing was getting a nice sunburn on my head and neck. I’ve bought some sunscreen for the face since then. What I really ought to do is grab a book and go to one of the parks and lay out, while reading.

Yesterday (Sunday) it was warmer out, and I didn’t want to spend much time outside, but I still went for a short stroll. I was walking to the nearby convenience store when, within two minutes time, I was asked by the drivers in two different cars, for directions to Massachusetts Avenue. Mass Ave is a diagonal street here in Indy that is mostly populated with art galleries and restaurants. Their queries made me think something must be going on, but I wasn’t sure what, and I didn’t feel like walking down there at the time. i did walk there today and didn’t see any remnants of any sort of gathering or celebration. So maybe it was just coincidence, or the gathering was pretty clean.

Concours photos

Posted on July 2, 2005

I posted some of photos of the 2005 Concours Grand Prix here. These were probably the best of the ones I had for the prints. I still have to scan in some slides, plus I still have to finish that last roll and get it developed. I’ll probably do that this coming week. In the meantime, enjoy.

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