marius

Thanks for explanation Qsilv. I mostly get it right, but sometimes when people call I'm apparently lying to them when I say, "I was just laying down to take a nap." Yes? (wink ... but really do want an answer.)

marius

123 word without title

Adjustments

“Ostensibly, things will culminate the way they want. How it’s synchronized. They are extravagant right now.” I watched him lean heavily on the kiosk. His movement dislodged a left-over garland from the holidays.

“Matt, I don’t understand.”

He snapped, “Don’t act stupid. You KNOW what I’m talking about! Why do people act like they don’t know?”

I sought the inward muse, then spoke. So softly. “Matt, are you talking about the aliens, the computer chips in people’s brains?” He glared at me with such malice. Things were fine until I’d said the word ‘apathy.’ He said he wants to strangle people who have apathy, that sometimes I’m one of them.

I made a mental note: Call Alice. This medication adjustment is NOT working!

marius

Note: This story is based on conversations with my very intelligent brother who has paranoid schizophernia. He does believe the aliens have put computer chips into some of our brains to study us. And, I do call "Alice" about his med adjustments a couple times a year. ; )

giraffe

For something to CULMINATE in whatever, it takes a build up. And OSTENSIBLE takes a lot of explanation or "set-up" to validate its use. In order to make them sound natural, it would take a longer word count. They always stick out like a sore thumb in such a short word count. I'm guilty of glossing them over for that reason.

I used culminate where 'terminate' would have been my first choice, e.g.

giraffe

Marius. I don't know if people 'have apathy'. They can feel or be apathetic. Maybe I'm wrong.

giraffe

Qsilv, I'm not "fair mangling certain words". I'm fairly mangling.... or nearly mangling....

marius

Tee hee giraffe, you keep me smiling. I think people can "have" apathy, but if someone with schizophrenia says they do (and my brother does actually say that), then, by golly, I'm not going to argue. ; )

However, I also am having trouble with this word list plus the word count. For me, these are difficult words to pull together anyway, but doubly difficult with such a short word-count. That is why I "cheated" and came up with the conversation with my brother. When he gets to talking about or from the vantage point of what I call his schizo-dramas, he does talk pretty much like what I wrote.

marius

Ala an old Qsilv trick ... (321 words without title)

The Four Bears

Once upon a time there were four bears named, Ostensibly, Strangle, Synchronized and Malice. One day a police man spotted them as they wandered into a park to forage. He pointed to the first bear and said, “What are you up to?”

The bears could only say one thing in English, their names, so the first bear said, “Malice.” This extravagant claim shocked the officer out of any dregs of apathy and he said to the next bear, “And what should I do with you all?” That bear said, “Strangle.” At this, the officer noticed an old garland hanging on the muse statue by the kiosk. Thus began what would culminate in the most astonishing newspaper headline ever read by man or woman.

marius

oops ... dyslexia ... 123 words, not 321.

Qsilv

*winks..... I wondered who'd pick up on that "fair mangling" --it's legit insofar as it's actually a colloquialism.

Saying "I'm laying down for a nap" sounds like there's a missing word in there... laying _______ (whomever) down....

(ahem) NOTE the sneaky addition to our object vs subject list... "whom" gets done to, "who" does the doing.

giraffe

Let's not forget that most published authors hire an editor to correct spelling and grammar. The creative idea is the author's job and it's very symbiotic with her/his editor. I don't want to see folks get so knotted up in perfect grammatical usage that they don't let the ideas flow. That creates writer's block. I know. Been there, done that. (Excuse me, I have been there and have done that).

midnightpoet

I love that this word list is inspiring based-on-true stories. It seems every list tends to spawn primarily a certain type of story, and I'm loving the results here.

Q, thanks for the lessons on word usage...I've always had trouble with lie and lay...Although, I remember it by when my mom used to tell me "You lie like a rug", and I'd always respond, "Rugs don't lie, they lay."

Ostensibly and culminate seem to be the toughies this time. I'm sorry for that. They're both words I tend to use quite often, so it didn't occur to me how difficult they'd be to fit into such a short story.

So, to show I'm not ALL evil (as I like to say, I'm pure evil with a sweet candy coating), I'll give you an option...it either needs to be 123 words OR 321 words. This is not a range, you need to hit one or the other word count. I'll even try to get something in on the shorter word count to give me something to do besides sitting here laughing sadistically...

Oh, and thanks for the whip, Q...that will be helpful when I'm trying to get the last of the stories from you guys before I pass the torch.

And, on that note, I noticed I forgot to mention when I'd be passing the torch...if it's alright with you guys, I'm going to give this one a longer time frame. I'm in a play right now and this is what my next week looks like: Rehearsal tomorrow night, rehearsal Saturday morning, set construction Monday, rehearsal Monday night, tech rehearsal Tuesday night, dress rehearsal Wednesday night, performance Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, and of course a cast party after we take down the set on Saturday...SOOO...

I'll pass the torch on Sunday 2/7, sometime in the afternoon or evening.

Doug

Missed out on a lot as I usually do....hard to be a vampire and play in the daytime (sleep needed once in awhile)..

Nylecoj: Loved your rewrite. It flows so much better and I knew there was a great story in there with the words you "tried" to use the first go around.

One small note to giraffe on editors. We have our own in-house editors, critics, and rah-rah gals and guys. Suggesting changes or giving ideas to make a story better has been part of ThinkWrite from the beginning I think. Ron would have massaquered some of our stories. The current in-between back and forth on grammar, word usage, and helpful suggestions has made the last few ThinkWrites beautiful literay wise. I hope it continues.

Now let me catch my breath and catch up on what that evil corner lurker's been up to. Lying, laying or in-between midnight?

Doug

Robin: Living in the burgh' where the two rivers come together at the "Point" and form the great Ohio has afforded me the (luxury?) of witnessing the geese in your story. It rang very true to me. Loved it!

Dragon: Let me tell a simple tale about a youngster of barely 16 who worked for $2.65 an hour at Mcd's and ran to the manager every chance I got to ask for more work. Clean out garbage cans or the bathrooms, no problem. I'm now counting my 30th year selling hamburgers to y'all as a head manager of course and some nights being the highest paid dishwasher in Pittsburgh. Minimum wage jobs can turn into something life-long. In my current store I try to treat everyone the same from the crack head whore to the nurses and college students who frequent my Mickey D's. Nice story. Been there, done that.

Doug

Easily could be titled "WHAT?"....here's my latest brain wave hoping that it reaches someone who understands this literary lunacy! 123 exluding title.

Mental Exercise

Malice before midnights muse stuck in an infinite groundswell of human apathy and despair.

A spark inhibitor of a brain stem creating arcs of deprivation instead of bituminous bits of brilliance.

Synchronize your Timex. The time has come culminating in a stranglehold of petulant passion keyed to glowing hands.

Kiosks with shiny baubles bursting at the touch of sliver garland strung too tight.

Nothing is easy or extravagant when pure thought meets head on with ostensibly chosen neurons misfiring on ribbons of lesions.

The pathways of our lives can be as dangerous or delightful depending on genetic combinations randomly processed as positive or negative energy.

A single thought transfused into a piercing beam of light igniting and then exploding into insanity or creativity…

marius

Well Doug (smiling) I think my mental has just been exercised, or perhaps, exorcised!

My favorite "word picture" is this one: "Kiosks with shiny baubles bursting at the touch of sliver garland strung too tight."

marius

marius wants to clarify something. At the end of recent ThinkWrite where I posted sentences from people's stories (and sorry I goofed on yours giraffe), I did not pick out the sentence that meant the most to me, the best written sentence (not that I would know which one is best), nor one I thought represented the whole story.

What I did, was find sentences that seemed to flow into a kind of list that "felt good" when I read it. Also meant to have only one sentence per story, but goofed on that too.

So, tee hee, so if anyone thinks, "Why did she pick THAT sentence? It doesn't really represent my story." Now you know why. Tee hee, maybe I've watched too many movie trailers. Have you noticed that they often have very little to do with the whole movie?

Anyway, it was REALLY fun to choose sentences and put them together to make a kind of snapshot of our time in TW34. I highly recommend it if anyone else is so inclined. : )

Doug

marius: It was an effective touch in summarizing your choices from the last ThinkWrite. Oh how I love to see my words immortalized. lol.

Doug

midnight: IN CASE ANYONE ELSE MISSED IT BESIDES ME,,,,MIDNIGHT SAID IT COULD BE 321 OR 123, NOT AN ESTIMATION, BUT AN EXACT WORD COUNT! Tee hee, more words to liberate...

marius

Something handy I just discovered ... you can do a google search typing in " culminate in a sentence" and get many good examples. Works for other words too. Try the link to see.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/examples/culminate

And, giraffe, I agree with you on not getting lost in grammar worries. I will probably *always* say ,"I was just layin' down to take a nap," because that feels and sounds normal. However, (dyslexia?) sometimes I use "lying down" too.

Since the doctor has not advised that the occasional use of improper grammar is a health hazzard, it seems likely that I'll keep the mis-uses I have. (Yes, Qsilv, I do appreciate your help, but for whatever reason my brain still will not make sense of it. Seriously, there are some learning disorder things going on. If you ever want to torture me, start talking about future present perfect imperfect past tenses. Or say the word 'gerund.' Yikes!) ; )