I saw a nice idea on another blog, and would like to do it here, with some improvements. The poster gave a list of ten words, and people tried to write a paragraph containing all 10 words. However, the words didn’t fit me; I would prefer words that a religious person could easily include in a short story. So I decided to do the exercise myself! The purpose is to develop writing skills, increase vocabulary, and---yes—have some fun! So I hope every weekend (Thursday or FRIDAY) to list ten words to be used for posts (which will be linked to from here) for the following week.
Rules:
1. Use all 10 words in a short vignette (or if you’re in a hurry, 5 words in two or 3three sentences). You can use derivatives (incline/inclined/inclination) of words, at least occaisionally.
2. Since many of the readers of this blog are religious, please keep your subject matter pretty “pareve” (clean), but no missionizing as we have all sorts of people here…..
3. If you want, you can add in a bit of explanation, reflection, at the end.
4. Link to here through the Mr. Linkey widget at the bottom of my page. Post the URL of the specific post.
THIS WEEK”S 10 words are:
Foliage – pepper – quill – humorous – spring – truck – artist – drawer – pillow – extrapolate .
If you want to join in the fun this week, go write, and link up below!
Here’s my piece:
Julie stood on the creaky old wooden floor of Mom and Dad’s porch. Well, it used to be their home. Someone was coming around in about half and hour to view the old house. Soon the place would be sold, and another fragile peace of her childhood experience would be lost forever. It was so odd about Dad dying. She really had never expected it; it wasn’t his “style”.
Mason City was a small town, and this street was a quiet one. She had never, she realized, seen a truck on this road. And the only change to the house had been when the coal burning furnace had been replaced with an oil one.
Julie took mom’s old duster, and brushed off the layer of dirt that dusted the railing that ran around the porch. The foliage in the yard was still a bit wane, but spring was definitely on its way. Her artistic eye envisioned the scene before her on a postcard. Maybe even in a framed stand on her desk at work, with a quill and inkwell nearby. Dad would have liked that; he had a good sense of humor, and wasn’t a fellow to mope around. And now? She tried to extrapolate from her vision of him to what he would be like up in heaven. She wondered, wryly, if there was a place in heaven for the wit that Dad had, something he seemed to pull from life the way others pull open a drawer. With that final thought, she fluffed up the pillow on the old swing at the porch’s end, and went inside to add some pepper to her salad.
Notes:
Julie’s “Dad” is a mixture of my Dad and Grandfather; the porch was my grandfather’s.
NEXT WEEK’S TEN WORDS:
Sparkle – spice – consider(ed) – feisty – tune – howl – fell – “hip-hop” - peculiar - incline (or inclination)
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