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An Un-Friday Not-Quite Writing Exercise

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Rosanna Stevens

Jul 27, 2010

Are you finding Friday Writing Exercises tie your knickers in a knot? Feeling anxious? Are you reaching the end of the blog post, opening a word document, and flopping toward the pantry door Piderman-style, in the hope you’ll chance upon food that was invisible five minutes earlier?

Unfortunately the pantry will only continue to offer stale starch, a strange breed of savoury conserve from a 2006 Christmas hamper, and a ransacked packet of snakes featuring only stiff orange and yellow. Worse still, you’ve given up on tapping out a Friday Writing Exercise post. The latter is a grand shame – I can only imagine the deliciously imaginative things you would have written (far better than anything in that bland old pantry).

I stumbled across (i.e. a very cool friend of mine linked me) this piece of fantastic last week, and couldn’t help but daydream about some of the wild responses y’all would invent. It’s not Friday, and this isn’t quite a writing exercise, but it might just loosen up those joints in lieu of the end of this week.

1. Visit this URL and follow the instructions.

http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/storymaker/storymaker.htm

Remember:

A verb is a doing word.

A noun is a person, place, or thing.

An adjective is a word that gives more information about a noun or pronoun. E.g. ‘she is an old horse.’ or, ‘your mother is attractive.’

2. Paste your wild tale below, for all to admire.

Here’s my attempt:

One day while I was composing in the library a searly pebble fell 
through the roof. It immediately jumped on the hearth and knocked over an orange. Then it ran out the door, into the cellar, and sang a bottle off the bookcase. 
It then knocked a glass of Drambuie off the coffee table. After
thirteen minutes of chasing the pebble through the house I finally caught it and put it outside. It quickly climbed the nearest otter.

A few too many things being knocked about, but otherwise good, non?