Today’s host: Narelle
It was around 30 degrees celcius and perfectly sunny this afternoon — one of the nicest days we’d had in weeks!
Chris, Natasha, Valerie and I arranged to meet at Prairie des Filtres, the park on the other side of the Pont Neuf which borders the Garonne river.
We settled on a wooden bench below a tall tree, with barely a metre of grass between our feet and the water. We wrote for two hours, side by side, slowly baking under the unrelenting sun.
As we wrote, ants crawled up our legs and ducks splashed about in front of us fighting for bread. At one point, a big black dog belly flopped into the river and later proceeded to stand behind Chris and shake off the water.
The focus was on exploring writing practice but there were too many distractions; none of us was focused. As a result, our writing was shallow and detatched. We had some funny moments, laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of what we’d written, but by the end I think we all left feeling quite bummed out with our efforts.
Next time, we’ll stick to our usual spot at the Crowne Plaza.
Here are the writing exercises we did. Please feel free to contribute your own writing in the comments section of this post.
Warm up: 10 mins free writing
Remembering the rules for writing practice, write for 10 minutes, without stopping, starting with: This morning…
Well done! Now take a break for 2 minutes. Don’t talk.
Now do the same thing, starting with: This afternoon…
Exercise 1 (From Natasha): 3 mins per paragraph
- Write ‘When I was…’ on a page.
- Beside that, write 3 different ages. (When I was 5, When I was 12, When I was 20, for example).
- Now write a paragraph for each age, starting with ‘When I was’
Exercise 2 (From Natasha): 20 mins free writing
Start with a line from a short story and write and develop it in the third person.
Line: “Peter Dyson came home one day to find his wife dead in the garage”
