The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

So I’m starting off a writer’s game. I read a description in the book I’m currently reading that just blew me away. I want to get as good as this line at description, so here’s the challenge: I’ll post a something to describe, and other writers can respond with a sentence or two. We’ll compile them, get links out, and have some fun, get some inspiration and sharpen our skills. This is the quote that inspired me:

The sky all at once is overhead dim and grey, puzzle of blocks sprawl, their own horizon; the city looks like a cemetery full of weak daylight, cool and a little wrong, making Ella feel a little put upon, like leap-year day—nothing in itself, but a nudge jostling every other day.
Michael Cisco The Tyrant

So here’s the first challenge: Describe a bad kiss or kisser. You can comment to me here, at facebook or twitter. Make sure to include your site for the link back.

Also, here’s another person who is doing a similar thing. Her prompt is “wet paper bag”. Difficulty: you can’t say those words.

So I’m going to start a writing game here and at the Compulsive Writer’s Support Group. Once a week, maybe during Write Chat on Sundays on Twitter, I’ll post something to describe in one or two sentences here, on Facebook and on twitter. I’ll let my writer friends respond to it, and we’ll post the best responses on my blogs. It’s kind of like scenes from a hat but for writers.

The idea is to spur some creative juices, and expand the creativity of writers and readers alike, quickly and simply. The writers will be able to have a link to their site from here, and so everybody gets some publicity. Should be fun. Pay attention to my posts for more information. Send me a friend request or follow me to get in on the game.

I was at DuckCon this weekend, and took in some of the panels in the writer’s track. There was only one in which I did any actual writing, and I wanted to share that one with you.

The panel was on Finding your Voice, and it was a two hour panel administered by J Stephenson. The exercise went like this: she had a bunch of magazine clipping, and you were supposed to pick two that spoke to you. She gave two minutes apiece to write about them, then you traded with the others in a three person group, did the same, washed, rinsed repeated. So you wound up with six little bits of description. Then we critiqued ourselves.

First to critique the exercise, some of the other writers felt two minutes wasn’t enough. One of the people in my group was writing longhand, as was most of the full audience, so I agree it might have been. I felt a little rushed but fine in those two minutes. Three might have given me a chance to give just a little polish, but I had the laptop, and I type moderately quickly. Second, we kind of faded as the class went on, and it didn’t really have a wrap-up. On the usefulness scale, it was a good exercise.

I’ve given my writings from this a very quick polish, but they are 95% what they were in the class. I took tow of the pictures for this, the rest we left there.

His older sisters never failed to make him feel this way. Ever since he was a child, every birthday he felt like this sitting alone in the corner, smaller than the world for their belittling comments, their snide remarks, their dominance of the conversation. He was always the little brother, a child, and even though he’d started a movement of art with his paintings, made enough to buy this house, be in magazines, be respected, he still wound up here as always, and on his birthday with his friends over no less. He knew it would always be like this because they treated the cat the same way.

It wasn’t for sport that the first instance ever of human aerial combat happened. It was over a woman, of course, but reasons are trivial. The combatants took to the air for lack of trust. Because they couldn’t trust each other to play by the well-established rules of gentlemanly duels, not use outside implements and the like, that they strapped on the helium balloons, and took to the air, the object being to drop the other to the ground. The result is also trivial. They drifted apart, out to sea, and the woman found someone else.

[This image showed a modern city built into the side of a cliff that probably went into the sea. The cliff made me think that if you were standing at the top, you could completely overlook the city.]

Ignored, overlooked, and hardly important to the rest of the world, a culture the nation was situated on the edge of a cliff, overlooking an ocean. They’d built into the rocks, made roads and cities, plied their trades and made their lives. They hardly noticed when the rest of the world went to war, and hardly noticed when it was gone. And so life continued in the nation of Marginalia

[this image showed a worn Harley jacket tossed over an arts and crafts prairie style chair]

Prairie style and motorcycles. That’s all that really matters. One’s for restin and looking pretty, the other’s for raising hell. It’s about balance. You raise too much hell, well, you might just go there. Order and chaos, obedient and rebellious, hard lines and hard life. Mama always told me to find middle ground, that a quiet life was best, but she didn’t know any better. She never had any fun. Just sat in her chair and waited for the sun to set.

[this image was of two triceratops style dinosaurs fighting. It didn't really speak to me]

For the moment, for the styrak, this fight was for life or death, it meant everything. Losing the fight meant death, no more species, no more young. The battle played, blow by blow drifting through the clearing. She wondered if she could turn and run with the wounded leg, if her pursuer would remain interested.

[this image showed a very emaciated man in a very oversized and horrifically ugly shirt laying on a bed of very bright pillows.]

He looked as if Giacommetti had chiseled him out of a much larger human, and then put the clothes back on, the cancer wouldn’t let him eat. His children took pity on him, tried to cheer him up. They brought in bright colors, because they through that it would bring more joy and light to his soul. He had what he needed. He’d lived a life, and felt loved, even if it was so misguided as to put him in these clothes in these dire hours. He took it as proof they’d learned his sense of humor.