Crash the bizarre into the everyday to give your writing energy
Last week, we posted a story of rationality trying to make sense of a very irrational, possibly insane time travel. This week, Christine Collings takes a torrent of extreme imagery and parks the whole lot firmly in the everyday reality of an office.
When we write to a prompt in our Saturday salon, everyone makes a list of words inspired by the prompt, and then shares one each to create a group list. A photo of a baby stingray generated some pretty revved-up words! The crash of opposites between the extreme and the everyday gives this piece terrific energy.
Writing to prompts in this way is practice, like yoga or piano practice, but it can also generate raw material for your “real” writing. What a wealth of original, unforgettable detail to choose from, if you were writing an office scene in a novel or short story!
You with your cutie pie eyes see me with my happily insulated belly in this granular mosaic of desks. Would you believe that I filled up on mushroom pastel ravioli that someone's murdered mother-in-law left in their freezer?
Well, no, you shouldn't. I tend to exaggerate for attention when my primordial 5 o'clock shadow appears after sitting in an institution for eight hours.
My office mates play a game of "inquisitive squid face" as if they had just eaten a quivering jellyfish instead of the plate of donuts and Christmas cookies displayed by the coffee machine.
Jane tops it all with her "Yoda of the Sea" impression. First, she claims that Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin didn't actually die from a stingray pierce to his thoracic. She dramatically pauses, bends her head down to tighten her throat and with her best Yoda voices delivers, "Testosterone, too much."
We giggle loudly.
Soon comes our smug boss. Speak or don't speak, I think to myself. Just stop giving us the side eye.
Perhaps if I was half as brave as Steve who wrestled crocodiles and jumped into the sea of stingrays, I would splash my words into the transparent office ocean of obvious - risking the death of my job.
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