Open a Book. Choose a book and open it to a random page and point to a phrase. Use that phrase to get you writing today. Free write for 15-20 without stopping.
I grabbed a totally random book off one of the gazillion bookshelves in my home, and it turned out to be Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park. Opened randomly and saw this phrase: "The dinosaur had spit in his eyes."
Ok, great! ha ha what am I gonna write?! And then I read the next sentence: "Even as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing."
That's more like it. Writing about fibromyalgia, after all (and how ironic that the very next sentence is about pain! In AA they say "You get what you need").
The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.
At work, we have an in-house term called "SPIT". It means "Special Itinerary". We have lots of these acronyms at work, so many that we practically speak our own language. I know other companies are like that, too. Recently, I've been dealing with two environmental companies about an oil leak. Both of them have alphabet-soup names and within each organization are three-letter-titled people: LSPs, EWMs, CGBs, EMTs you could go on and on.
Spit in his eyes. That could be taken two ways. He was in so much pain, he was about to spit forth out of his eyes, is what Chrichton meant. But someone reading English as a second language, and perhaps having heard the phrase before might envision someone ELSE spitting INTO the dinosaur's eyes. "spit in his eyes!" Like a self-defense command.
My puppy, Charlie Brown, just came into the room while I'm writing this, with a rock in his mouth. He stops at the front of my desk and peers at me through the small space underneath the dual monitors on the desk -- just enough space there for us to make eye contact. He pauses there whenever he enters the room, just to make sure I'm still here. I call out a hello as I lower my head just enough to meet his eyes through the small little opening between the two monitors and the top of the actual desk (as opposed to the virtual desktop, of course). When I say whatever I say, he walks around to the side of the desk and wag-wag-wags his gigantic tail which is right now at age 4 months just about the same size as the rest of his body. Is this, along with his huge paws, an indicator of how huge he will grow to become? Prob'ly! I ask, "What have you got?" and he knows that means I'll probably try to take it away, so he takes three steps forward towards the door, then looks up at me again. "Just lemme see it!" I demand. He huff-huff-huffs and wag-wag-wags some more and I manage to reach out and touch the edge of whatever it is that's in his mouth before he circles around and throws himself down on the blanket beside the desk. Whomp!! and promptly drops the small rock he's been carrying in his already-powerful jaws. "Oooo! It's a rock! What a good boy!" I feign extreme excitement. He chomps on the rock a little bit, hoping it'll be like those favorite ice cubes and melt and break down, but of course it doesn't. Charlie gets bored lying beside me after about eight seconds, and clomps across the room in his too-big feet, rock in mouth. Drops the rock just in front of the door, does a downward dog, picks up the rock and trots down the stairs to go harass our other dog, Hobie, or one of the cats, or a combination thereof. I hear a minor crash as he collides ever so ungracefully into his incredibly huge, metal crate on the way through the dining room and into the kitchen, and out the sliding door to the great outdoors. Next, he will probably bring in a piece of wood and demolish it all over the carpet, causing me to break out the vac.
It turns out today's writing prompt came up with nothing at all relating to fibromyalgia! And little to do with the phrase that started it all: The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.
Charlie is beating up on 12-year-old Hobie. I gotta go!
I grabbed a totally random book off one of the gazillion bookshelves in my home, and it turned out to be Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park. Opened randomly and saw this phrase: "The dinosaur had spit in his eyes."
Ok, great! ha ha what am I gonna write?! And then I read the next sentence: "Even as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing."
That's more like it. Writing about fibromyalgia, after all (and how ironic that the very next sentence is about pain! In AA they say "You get what you need").
The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.
At work, we have an in-house term called "SPIT". It means "Special Itinerary". We have lots of these acronyms at work, so many that we practically speak our own language. I know other companies are like that, too. Recently, I've been dealing with two environmental companies about an oil leak. Both of them have alphabet-soup names and within each organization are three-letter-titled people: LSPs, EWMs, CGBs, EMTs you could go on and on.
Spit in his eyes. That could be taken two ways. He was in so much pain, he was about to spit forth out of his eyes, is what Chrichton meant. But someone reading English as a second language, and perhaps having heard the phrase before might envision someone ELSE spitting INTO the dinosaur's eyes. "spit in his eyes!" Like a self-defense command.
My puppy, Charlie Brown, just came into the room while I'm writing this, with a rock in his mouth. He stops at the front of my desk and peers at me through the small space underneath the dual monitors on the desk -- just enough space there for us to make eye contact. He pauses there whenever he enters the room, just to make sure I'm still here. I call out a hello as I lower my head just enough to meet his eyes through the small little opening between the two monitors and the top of the actual desk (as opposed to the virtual desktop, of course). When I say whatever I say, he walks around to the side of the desk and wag-wag-wags his gigantic tail which is right now at age 4 months just about the same size as the rest of his body. Is this, along with his huge paws, an indicator of how huge he will grow to become? Prob'ly! I ask, "What have you got?" and he knows that means I'll probably try to take it away, so he takes three steps forward towards the door, then looks up at me again. "Just lemme see it!" I demand. He huff-huff-huffs and wag-wag-wags some more and I manage to reach out and touch the edge of whatever it is that's in his mouth before he circles around and throws himself down on the blanket beside the desk. Whomp!! and promptly drops the small rock he's been carrying in his already-powerful jaws. "Oooo! It's a rock! What a good boy!" I feign extreme excitement. He chomps on the rock a little bit, hoping it'll be like those favorite ice cubes and melt and break down, but of course it doesn't. Charlie gets bored lying beside me after about eight seconds, and clomps across the room in his too-big feet, rock in mouth. Drops the rock just in front of the door, does a downward dog, picks up the rock and trots down the stairs to go harass our other dog, Hobie, or one of the cats, or a combination thereof. I hear a minor crash as he collides ever so ungracefully into his incredibly huge, metal crate on the way through the dining room and into the kitchen, and out the sliding door to the great outdoors. Next, he will probably bring in a piece of wood and demolish it all over the carpet, causing me to break out the vac.
It turns out today's writing prompt came up with nothing at all relating to fibromyalgia! And little to do with the phrase that started it all: The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.
Charlie is beating up on 12-year-old Hobie. I gotta go!
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