Friday, December 3, 2010

Inspired Writing Group, assignment, One Shot Writing

We call ourselves the Inspired Writers Group. We meet every two weeks, talk about writing and more importantly we write. We share our projects and we read our weekly assignment. Usually we are given a word to fit into a two page piece. This week we have done something a little different. Our assignment: to write a short piece and NOT EDIT.
One shot writing.

I am the multible draft, re-write, edit queen. To write and not edit, (gulp), but I did it. The following is my assignment...no spell checks, no read-through until the end...what you see is what I wrote, one shot only. Do I hang my head, red faced because of errors...no, actually I like it...hope you do to.


My Writing Place

It’s my kitchen table…the end facing double ovens and stove top. I face the island piled with junk mail and macs, (bruised), Clementine’s, (soft). They speak of moments in the produce department with a promise to eat healthy. I end up in the bakery isle…breads and cakes do not go fuzzy in my house.
When I write I stare at cherry cabinets and when the words do not come I think of how lucky I am to have such a nice place to write, and eat, and gather with my family.
My kitchen becomes a meadow in Wyoming, (my novel), the hospice room where my mother died, (my memoir), where I work, (my book of essays), a back alley in Florida, (my book of short stories), and a shelf stacking a dictionary of ideas so numerous, it’s a library of writing dreams.
This is my writing place. During the day the TV is blaring in the other room most of the time when someone else is home and even when someone is not. At night it is a quiet place of dissolving into another world of someone else. With heavy eyelids I write well, with a heavy heart I write my best, with joy I am not writing I am living and from that I sit at my kitchen table, stare at the ovens and remember, and type, and put down how life has made me lucky.
The kitchen…my place to write…is the center of my house, my family, me heart and life’s word count. Double spaced, one inch margins I wonder how many words, how many pages I will get to print of my life before my body runs out of ink and the pages go blank.