Doug

Love the “cheerio” story marius…

Ok we’re off on another ThinkWrite exploration. This time around we may even have the esteemed founder Mr. Anotherronism participating? I do wish you well. There shall be no words of wisdom or a common theme just a simple list with an exact word count. What you do with it is your choice. Mutiny is forbidden (wink, wink) this time around. You may write in any style you choose. As everyone knows I do like a good scare (come on Marius!) and I do expect at least an appearance and participation from everyone.

Oh I almost forgot…thanks again giraffe for making my life hell! Yes I have one million and one things to do and work nights at the same time, but I will try to give as much feedback as I can. I may even go back “old school” when Ron would scold us for our stories that he deemed unfit or grammatically inferior.

MrsJesus: If you want to participate this time around, please abide by the rules or anyone else who happens to pop up and play with us.

Word count…….318
Word list:

Contestant
Battery
Constant
Between
Simple
Quiet
Stratosphere
Quixmickle (I just love this word, thank you marius!)
Peace
Purple

Good Luck!

Doug

Oh no....I have to pick an end date. Ooops. See what the mind is like these days.. Lets see....

How about May 21st. That will give you two weeks to pummel me with peacockery (oooooo...I like that word! tee-hee!

giraffe

Are word variations OK (quiet or quietly)?

giraffe

And just out of curiosity, can anyone describe any situation in real life where exact word count matters? Newspapers sometimes edit to column inches or lines of text. ?????

marius

Oh Doug, this looks delicious.

And um, er ... Mark Twain said the best way to get someone to do something is to tell them NOT to do it. Marius would like to add that telling someone HOW you'd like them to do something can have interesting results, especially if you write "Mutiny is forbidden (wink, wink) this time around," and then tell Mrsjesus and new-comers to follow the rules. Oh, this confusion is scaring me! LOL!

giraffe, you are funny! I have written grant requests that forbid going *over* a certain word-count. That's the only example I have. As for word variations, a nail is a nail whether it's at the hardware store waiting for you to buy it or it's stuck in the wood of your home. From this view, quiet, quietly, quieting are all the same. A word in a different setting, still the same word. : )

Qsilv

pff.... don't let ron-the-1st scare you... those early ThinkWrites also offered variations, only we paid for 'em with reduced word counts, x amount per altered word. Seemed more of a nuisance than it was worth and got dropped.

(Q wanders off, muttering... "contestant... battery? ...conTESTant???..."

giraffe

Just whetting my whistle on this. I didn't count the words.

BATTERIES

I can't remember when I wasn't a beauty pageant contestant. Mom says she started me out at 3 years old. I just know it's a constant barrage of duties, diets and primping. Even between pageants I was expected to act like a queen. She always dressed me in purple because "that's the royal color".

She was a good trainer and (even though I felt like a show dog - purple poodle) she really drummed in the perfect attitude. You see, at times you have to look like your mind is out in the stratosphere somewhere. That lets them know you have a dumb side and they like that. Then other times you pretend to have inner peace.

My friends are very simple. They don't know how gruesome it is for me and they don't even care. Mom says they're just jealous. Sometimes when it's very quiet, I try to imagine what it would be like to just die in my purple robe. My mind goes all quixmickle and all I can think of is hooking up some huge battery to my brain and erase my thoughts.

Tonight's the Miss Hoover Vacuum Pageant. If I even place, I'm guaranteed a spot in the Miss Tupperware Pageant.next week. Where do you even buy a huge battery? Mom's got a small one, but that just makes me feel ditzy.

Nylecoj

ooooooo! Awesome list Doug! Where do you guys come up with these words!?!

chelydra

[No title}


Finding in the mail an invitation from the Governor’s office to be a contestant in the Fifteenth Annual North Carolina Battery Hen Shooting Challenge, I was caught between my therapist’s constant advice to keep life simple and quiet, and a sudden, overwhelming, visceral urge to blast thousands upon thousands of those innocent little feathery beings through the stratosphere, past the moon, across the galaxy, and over the threshold of space-time into the quixmickle beyond, where their poor tormented little souls might find peace, perhaps roosting in an eternally fruitful mulberry bush under the purple wing of an avian god.

My therapist’s voice in my head told me I should just throw the letter in the trash. But that thick, soft, angel-white vellum paper was vibrating in my hand like a baby bird. It felt destiny calling. After an hour or two of focused meditation in the back yard, aided by half a pack of Marlboro Light 100s and a few Bud Lights, I felt enlightened enough to make the right decision.

I keep my great-grandfather’s old barn out back locked up tight, supposedly so neighborhood kids won’t go breaking legs leaping out of the hayloft, getting hands caught in rusty machinery, or hanging themselves from the rafters after their first love sours. But the main reason is what’s inside, which I’ve been saving for a special occasion.

In 1945, Grandpa was chauffeur, maybe boyfriend, for the head of the OSS, which soon became the CIA, so he was positioned to bring home his pick of war souvenirs. I’ve sold all the rest to pay the back taxes. This one I don’t want to part with, and anyway, eBay won’t list a V-2 rocket, even if you don’t mention that no one ever bothered to take the bomb out of its nosecone. The Governor’s invitation didn’t specify what kind of weaponry to bring, or to not bring.

Tennineeightsevensixfivefourthreetwoonezero… Cluck.

___________________________________

318 words exactly. All words in first sentence, all in order, except that I didn't notice I'd missed 'constant' until too late to place it correctly. After writing that sentence (North Carolina, battery hens, etc) I thought I might include the current governor's name — so I looked it up. You can too. It was too weird, so I left it out. Perdue.

Another believe-it-or-not is that the rocket part was based on a letter sent to my father, who was a fairly well-known collector of antique firearms, offering to sell him, quite cheap, a V-2 rocket with a live warhead. The letter was real; I saw it. We assumed the rocket was real too. I don't recall if delivery was part of the offer. He decided not to take it.

chelydra

So now there's one girl story and one boy story! Didn't realize how gender-specific such things are until I saw these back-to-back.

I also see I left out a word - not from the list, just one to put it over 318 — should be vibrating LIKE a baby bird. Guess there's plenty of time to find another word to delete.

chelydra

oops, sorry, thought it was Ms. Giraffe. (Most of my stories seem to be from female points of view too, actually.)

giraffe

chelydra. I'm male, but I like to write from different perspectives. Maybe I'll be a leper next. Or a cigar smoking Lesbian. That's the fun of it.

From the male point of view, your story has a lot of insight. Weapons, Grandpa, the barn. I really enjoyed it.

chelydra

thanks, and i love your beauty queen

chelydra

word count solution - add LIKE as noted above, and change to AN HOURS'S WORTH of meditation etc. One in, one out, back to 318. So as not to clutter up the board with the same story over and over I find more mistakes, I'll let this be the correction unless you prefer it all together.

giraffe

Thank you too, chelydra.

Question to Doug and Ron: Are we totally excluding writers who don't do this particular form of "editing" from contributing to this forum? Maybe they are very creative and don't want to bear the Torch, but have a desire to express themselves in writing. Are they outcasts? I guess they could start their own forum. That's probably what's gonna happen. I might like that one better too.

marius

Giraffe, if one reads earlier TW's, there is rule-breaking, rule-forming and who knows what else. Doug DID say "follow the rules (wink wink)" or something like that. It seems that TW has reached the adolescent stage of growth in which case we might expect to see rules broken, boundaries tested and parents surviving. ; )

On that note, here's a piece marius wrote for Dragon's most recent ThinkWrite. [I DID read in a very early TW, that people could submit stories from previous wordlists, but that they should say which wordlist they are using.] : )


Dance of Writing

She sits at the porch table staring out the window but seeing the world within. The round table before her is covered with a strange Walmart vinal cherry and leaf pattern which is almost entirely covered with pens, pencils, markers, books, tablets, a mirror, make-up, candles, bits of cedar, cold coffee, stamps, sun lotion, greeting cards, tweezers, white-out tape, a bulky calendar, Kleenex, an odd piece of wood, three pairs of reading glasses, fingernail polish, a bag of bear root, a small rock named Little Buddy, a bank statement, two rulers, a solar calculator, a magnifying glass, an address book, scotch tape, a laptop computer and a cat looking for a place to rest.

The cat wedges between things, and the stack with the bank statement and greeting cards falls to the floor. The cat acts like she hasn’t the faintest idea that anything has changed. Toads are singing high-trilled mating calls and the wind is picking up. Storms are predicted, Midwest rip-roaring thunder, lightning and hail.

She gets a piece of bear-root, chews it. It is pungent like menthol. Van Morrison was playing on the radio earlier; she loves his ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ but now she is savoring the mystic sounds of toads, and the chorus frogs that just joined in.

She has written a caravan of stories recently. It is new territory: odd, fun and a little scary. She looks into the cat’s eyes. They are dark moons hiding private things. The cat had been abused when they found her. Nine years later and there is much improvement, but the cat still scares easily.

The woman is like that too ... but it doesn’t seem to be stopping her anymore.

marius

And, yes my writing table looks just like that. (smiles)

marius

giraffe: Love "Batteries." LOL "Miss Tupperare Pagent."

chelydra, you old snapper you (sorry, could not resiste that) ... great to see you here! Fun story and loved reading the history behind it too. Also enjoyed the flow/style of your writing. Hope to see more.

Doug ... I did write a story using your word list and think it might turn into something but for now it isn't going anywhere. It's stuck in the stratosphere and not coming down. : )

Doug

Just a quick note as I'm "off to work". Of course word variations and the "rule breaking" are allowed. One thing that Ron was always a stickler for was EDITING. Work on editing down your story without losing the "story". I'll get back to reading your stories later. I'm not real big on profanity though I might add. There are other ways to say things.

giraffe

Cool story, marius. I'm a total cat lover too. My whole apartment looks like what you described and Oz doesn't seem to notice. He just enjoys jumping over things. Then he climbs up on my chest to lick my beard clean. Damn whiskers tickle.

MrsJesus got sent to his corner, but he may come back. I hope so. He's very good.