Tag Archives: exercise

Jan21

A Prose Poem

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Bereft

Your leaving would take the middle out of my life. To say that I would miss you is like beggars’ alms, for they are a beggar’s words. I would be desperately alone and the world would not know it. I would laugh as I always have: too heartily. But, I would not cry. To think of life without you would be like drinking tea from a saucer, too hot and then too cold. It would be like climbing Mount Everest and not finding ice and snow there, yet having lost a limb to frostbite. To think of every day, crystallising without you is emptiness so vast I cannot comprehend it, like light not comprehending darkness. The very aliveness of the world, the very death in me, a zombie; gyrating from one true pure function to another; that would be me without you. 

The loneliness of the heart you have already known, but picture the strangeness of my soul without you.

Oct4

Loser. Baby. Mend. Wet. Only

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Five words to create a story. Sometimes just one word will do. These five words were a prompt at one of the Creative Writers’ Workshops held by our Bahrain Writers’ Circle. We had to use all five words in no particular order. What story would you create given these five words and fifteen minutes?

If you’re inclined, send your story to me and I’ll publish it here.

Note: The words are in bold letters.

Only Anita knew how she felt. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, she was happy. Her smile was the biggest, brightest thing that greeted anyone no matter what, no matter when. In the rain, when it’s pouring buckets of the stuff, you’re so wet even your high spirits are damp. On days you felt that nothing could possibly bring a smile to your face, there she was: Anita, with her big, cheerful smile.

Everyone thought she was such a happy person. Why shouldn’t she be? She’d just had that lovely baby and he was all of six months old. He had a thick mop of hair that curled and flopped around his face. He was a happy baby with a gurgling laugh and he rarely cried.

All that was for the world to see.

Only Anita knew the pain and betrayal, the lies and the secrets behind the baby’s birth. In the darkest, quietest moments of the day, she knew the truth. A truth she pushed down into the deepest recesses of her mind. “How could I have done that with such a loser?” She thought. Her eyes clouded over with tears at the memory, her stomach churning with disgust. “How can I ever mend the damage I have done to my marriage? This will have to be my secret, one that I must take to my grave. Poor Jay, he must never know. It will kill him. It’s killing me. Every day I look at this beautiful child, I pray that he’ll look more like me as the years go by.”

 

 

 

Mar8

Writing exercise

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For a while at the Bahrain Writers Circle we used to have Creative Writing exercises that were started by Ana Paula Corradini, then continued by Shauna Nearing Loej and Anita Menon. The exercises began with a prompt and we were given about five minutes to take these forward wherever our wild imaginations took them.

Some, like the one below began with a prompt – as indicated by the opening lines – and then the coordinator would throw in random words, also in bold. The challenge was to incorporate these words and still tell a continuous, coherent story.

See what you would do with the following. Send in your stories and if I like them I’ll publish them here!

Wisps of hair quickly fell to the floor while words spilled from her mouth. She loved sitting in that chair pouring her soul out to a total stranger. Such therapy! She was harbouring thoughts of her evil deed and the words came out in code. The danger of speaking about this out loud wasn’t lost on her. She knew she shouldn’t say so much but she felt no shame as the hairdresser’s scissors snipped away her long locks changing her look completely. She was bewildered by the face that was emerging in the mirror. Did that look like a sinner? No. She was done. Changed. And then she rose, picked up her torch and walked into the night, knowing that the deaf hairdresser hadn’t heard a word. The soft velvet of the night embraced her.