Sep 29 2008
Writers: Give the First “Word Shot” a Shot!
As promised, today is the day I’m launching what I hope to be the first of many “Word Shot” exercise-competitions at TheWritersBag.com.
As I mentioned a few days ago, my plan is to run a human interest photo in each Monday’s blog post. That’s my job. Your job is to take a few minutes, really look at the photo and then write and post a comment that relates to the photo. It can be a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, several paragraphs, a full story … whatever. You can write something funny about the photo, something insightful about it, something touching about it … it’s completely up to you. Be as traditional or as “out there” as you wish.
Then, as a writers’ community, readers of TheWritersBag will have the opportunity to post comments on what you’ve written.
The object of this game is to (1) hone our skills and talents by participating in the valuable exercise of writing about a photo, and to (2) help each other out by reviewing what other people have written and then offering constructive suggestions, encouragement or sincere praise.
In next Monday’s Word Shot post, I will run the photo from this post, together with the written comment that has been submitted for it that I feel is most notable, along with the writer’s name (unless requested to keep it anonymous). I will also run a new Word Shot photo to keep the exercise going.
Did I mention a prize? I will e-mail all three of my e-manuals to the person whose written comment I select each week. If you win, and you already have the manuals, I’ll e-mail them to the person of your choosing as a gift from you. (In the future, I may be able to swing other prizes as well.)
Please don’t be afraid to participate! I’ll moderate the comments and weed out any that cross the line from constructive suggestions to mean-spirited criticism. So you don’t have to worry about being roasted. (However, judging from the previous comments of those who read this blog, that shouldn’t be a problem.)
And so, without further ado, here’s the first-ever Word Shot. Look at it intensely, then write something about it and submit what you write in a comment. Here we go….
Don’t forget to check back with TheWritersBag during the coming week to read what others have written and to see if anyone has commented on what you’ve written.
Let’s make this a powerful, constructive and fun writing exercise that we share every week! Take a shot!
They observed their world as if it were a dream. There was always a distance that kept them from feeling like a part of it. It was never their world.
A rumpled landscape of destruction assaulted our eyes. Hand in hand, my daughter and I drank in the heady, nauseating despair of the plain below.
Yes! Tombo and Anna, thanks for getting things started so quickly … and with compelling comments that work so beautifully with the photo. This is exactly what I was hoping for.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. They watched as their world slowly died and blew away in the wind.
“O’ Course it wasn’t always like that. I mean, I remember when all this was banks…”
Melancholy flowed through my mother’s hand like blood through an umbilical cord, leaving lifeless shades of gray inside us both. She lost the memory before I did even though she had color longer. I still remember when it’s dark.
Sadness. Despair. Hope.
As an Eco-Mom I feel there is no end, it seems, to the toxic world in which we both bring children into and then have to raise. My faith is weak at times, but I have to believe that we are here on this earth to be able to withstand some things unharmed. God created all things and He knows best.
We and our children have a purpose here. And one purpose may be to combat the toxins left behind from unintentional scholars. We fight on. For the earth’s health. For our health. And especially for our children’s health.
Helen crested the hill with her daughter Cristina in tow. Together they had traveled quite a distance. Helen was unsure of just how far they hade gone. She held in her hand a tattered postcard with a picture of a place called “Hollywood”. It was this very card that had sent her on a search for the sparkling lights and beauty that were portrayed. She looked down at the weathered paper. Helen had no idea how long it had lay in the dirty street before she picked it up and took it home. She remembered the exact moment that she decided to travel to this place and find a new life.
Helen looked at her surroundings, her mouth agape. She looked down at the postcard again. Where were the lights? And the people? All that stood before her was a barren, dusty landscape and a large smoke stack billowing filth into the air.
She had heard stories of the beauty that could be found here. The people were so friendly and welcoming. There would be work for her to earn money to take care of little Cristina. She had been so excited about the prospect of having a real future once she arrived there. Now, all there was in her view was a scene so familiar; so much like the one she had fled.
Helen dropped to her knees and began sobbing. Her tears fell to the ground and wet the worn edges of the postcard which had come to rest in the dirt. She had never felt disappointment like this. It overcame her. She thought of Cristina and her future. All those miles and all the pain, not to mention the danger to her life and the life of her daughter, were so far in the past. She couldn’t go back now. She had come too far and endured too much. Somehow she would find a way to make it work. This served to strengthen her resolve; it allowed her to push past the pain and move forward.
Helen arose, brushed herself off, grabbed Crustina by the hand, and began the long journey down the hill. “This is where life begins”, she told herself.
The world had dimmed that day, when I turned 10. I was not a child anymore, and our village wasn’t either.
I asked my mother, “Who are these people? Why are they here?”
Mother stared off into the smoke filled air. Her eyes were smooth obsidian glass; her hand trembled in mine. She sat down on the ashen earth. She did not respond again for 3 years.
Where has the light of my life gone? My heart is heavy and darkness covers me. There is no hope, only burning and drought ahead of me. Where is the promise of my recovery?
I look down at the hand in mine.
Hey Rick, nice start. When do we get the rest of the story…?
No. We are not stealing share of unborn kids. We are making sure that they will come to the world, and will deal with our sacrifices.
“Golly, the Emerald City has sure changed since I was
a girl…”
No matter where I’m going. No matter when and how. As long as I’m with you, I’m fine. I’m home.
‘Tis out upon the sandy gray of our future that we witness that which is most necessary, yet that which can do the most harm.
I welcome thee, as humanity evolves. It’s future ever hopeful, ever bleak.
Sand. Sand everywhere. It covered the quarry beside the town in tall gray mounds and snaking rivulets, as if some god-child had been playing in his own cosmic sandbox with real buildings and a factory whose tall smoke stack spewed real, putrid smoke. Above dark clouds hovered sluggishly; the only sunlight that could filter through them was wan and gloomy, making the quarry look like a gray wasteland. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought that I was in the set of some apocalyptic movie instead of on the weedy hill at the outskirts of San Mateo, the town I grew up in.
My sister Lena stood mutely beside me. Her hand was clenched around my small fingers in an uncommonly tight grip; I could barely feel the softness of her palm. She was staring at a little brown box beyond a wall-like mound of sand. When I squinted at it I could dimly recognize the squat outline of Ma’s apartment building. Lena had hurried me out of bed and through the door while Ma was snoring loudly on the table, her half-empty glass of bourbon sitting quietly beside her head. I wanted to call out to her and say goodbye, but in my heart of hearts I knew better than to wake her up after she’d been drinking. Her screams and blows echoed in my mind as we stood in silence for several minutes on the hill facing the quarry. At that time I wanted to scream too, but no sound would form inside my throat.
When Lena said, “It’s time to go,” I nodded and followed her over the other side of the hill. Neither of us looked back as we made our way down the barren path.
–
Can I post this picture and my comment on my blog? I kinda like it ^^
Mom and Daisy left us that day. Just walked away from the family toward the river and the coal-fired electric plant that kept our lights on these past 40 years or so.
Dad and Mom fought for the last time that morning. Mom never fought fair.
One time I remember she called 911, getting the cops involved as her trump card because Dad didn’t get out of the house right away after she told him to leave. As she got louder and angrier, Dad got more stubborn, stood his ground, and told her he’d leave once she calmed down. Instead she became more out of control and pushed and pulled at him. But Dad was too strong and stood his ground. In the end, as always, Dad surrendered and left. The cops never showed up.
I could see the sadness in his eyes when I knocked on my bedroom window to get his attention before he opened the car door. He looked at me, smiled, and waved an index finger in a circle around his right ear, indicating that he thought Mom was a nut job. I felt envious he was escaping the tension and chaos of home with my Mom, whose everyday moods were gray and hot and toxic like the smoke from that electric plant.
I don’t know where he stayed, only that it was about a week before we saw him again, building a backyard shed when I woke up one morning. I think he still loved her until the day she disappeared with Maggie, my four year old sister, but I don’t know that.
He never talks bad about her and we keep her photo by the small table next to the fireplace. She was a beauty. Maybe she still is. He’s a good Dad.