The beige phone in The Turmeric Bar and Grill, was ringing by mistake – wrong number; the band was playing The Spider Song for an audience of 5; on a silent television, a point was scored in a soccer match when the goalie was out of position and; on another screen, The Sentence flickered on in silence as the rehabilitated man walked in the front door.
Background info:
Davina, at Shades of Crimson recently held a creative writing exercise in which 9 words were to be used in a story, poem, etc., keeping it to a maximum of 100 words. It had to have a title, an image, and a few words on what the process was like.
Even though I don’t often participate in writing contests or “exercises,” this exercise took place while we were on our trip and I was only aware of it peripherally.
On Shades of Crimson, Davina shared several pieces that were submitted. Today she shared her version, Stoic, along with another piece, The Opening Line, both done as practical exercises for a summer writing class.
The Opening Line uses a different set of 9 words – in bold in the piece I wrote, at the top of the page.
Davina says “Please feel free to try your hand at this new set of nine words. Maybe you can use them in one or two sentences. Or, write a poem, or whatever comes to you.”
So I did.
I wanted to use all 9 words in one long sentence. It took me two tries and, after the first, this morning, I decided not to pursue it any further.
Then I sat down at the computer again this evening and tried it once more.
One of the things that strikes me in this is how much help Google can be for creative writing:
- On searching “turmeric,” I saw a link to a restaurant by that name, which led to the bar and grill.
- I wanted to use some other definition for “sentence” than one having to do with grammar and found the name an episode in a 90s TV series.
- I had already included a song called “Spider,” but then went back to Google , after success with the first two items, to see if I could find a song with the word “spider” in it.
The image is from the series episode and is linked a video from the episode. The closure of my text is tied to the plot of the video.
