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Posts in category Write on Wednesdays

12 Days of Christmas — Write on Wednesdays

Dec7th
2011 12 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer
Write on Wednesdays

 

Write On Wednesdays
 

Write On Wednes­days Exer­cise 27 — Mel sug­gested that we look at the “12 Days of Christ­mas” poem/song and select one of the days/lines for our writ­ing inspi­ra­tion. So, whether a Par­tridge in a Pear Tree or Five Golden Rings, write your line at the top of your page, set your timer for 5 min­utes and write the first words that come into your head.

12 Days of Christmas

I have cho­sen “two tur­tle doves” as my line. Here we go…

Two tur­tle doves. When I think about that, it reminds me of the purity and ever­last­ing rela­tion­ship they have together. I then think about my rela­tion­ship with my wife. We have been through so much together, yet we have still come out on the other side stronger than ever. Our love is very unique.

Get­ting mar­ried after 8 days was incred­i­ble. It was absolutely love at first sight. We now try to live a Chris­t­ian mar­riage to the best of our abil­ity. Two tur­tle doves seem per­fect in every way, but I have no doubt even these ani­mals of majes­tic beauty strug­gle with life. Har­monie and I love each other so deeply that I believe our con­nec­tion will never be bro­ken. All rela­tion­ships have strug­gles, but it’s how we change and adjust to what we face that is most important.

Two tur­tle doves. Stay­ing together for life and a great illus­tra­tion for us to live by; pure and everlasting.

Time. Well I didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but this was a good exer­cise this week. If you are a writer and would like to par­tic­i­pate with this writ­ing group, head over to InkPa­per­Pen and check out the writ­ing prompts each week.

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I Thought I Saw — Write on Wednesdays

Oct25th
2011 14 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer

Write on Wednesdays

Write On Wednesdays
 

After a short hia­tus due to mov­ing, med­ically retir­ing from the Air Force, and med­ical prob­lems, I’m back for this week’s Write on Wednes­days exer­cise. I felt like it’s been for­ever since I have par­tic­i­pated and I’ve greatly missed it! This week’s prompt:

Write On Wednes­days Exer­cise 20 - Write the words ” I thought I saw” at the top of your page. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write the first words that come into your head after the prompt. Don’t take you pen off the page (or fin­gers off the key­board). Stop only when the buzzer rings!

I Thought I Saw

I thought I saw the doc­tor who was going to help fix the tumors in my knees. After hear­ing mul­ti­ple doc­tors speak about how great he was, I was very excited when I got to his office. My wife and I walked in and were greeted by a very friendly recep­tion­ist. They were hav­ing com­puter issues the day we came in, so we had to fill out some paper­work by hand. “Not a prob­lem,” we thought.

We sat down in the wait­ing room, anx­ious to meet this doc­tor who was going to help us. There was a TV in the wait­ing room with the news on, so we took inter­est in watch­ing that. After a while, I started get­ting a lit­tle stir crazy. “How long has it been?” I asked my wife. She responded, “Almost two hours.” I couldn’t believe it.  She had to walk out to the car and get our spare oxy­gen tank because my cur­rent bot­tle was run­ning out.

After chang­ing my oxy­gen bot­tle, my wife walked up and asked the recep­tion­ist how much longer it was going to be. “You guys are next,” she replied. Finally, after a two and a half hour wait, we were taken back to the physi­cians room. They took my vitals and told us the doc­tor would be in shortly. After another 20 minute wait, a stu­dent doc­tor came in. He asked some ques­tions and told us we were def­i­nitely at the right doc­tor to get answers.

I thought I saw the right doc­tor, but I was wrong. He gave me no answers and refused to help me due to my case being too com­plex. I guess this wasn’t the right doctor.

The search continues.….

Thank you for read­ing my con­tri­bu­tion to this week’s Write on Wednes­days exer­cise. If you are inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing in this great writ­ing group, check out InkPa­per­Pen today!

 

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A Neighbor of Mine

Sep20th
2011 18 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer

Write On Wednesdays

A Neigh­bor of Mine

As I look out from our garage, I notice a neigh­bor of mine across the street. He always tends to stick to him­self. Never more than a sim­ple “hello” or “how’s it going.” He’s an older guy, stocky, with white hair. He loves to work on his old car, which has prob­a­bly been sit­ting in his garage for many years, untouched. It’s still just a rusty frame. From my lim­ited knowl­edge on cars, I would say late 60’s, early 70’s, Amer­i­can mus­cle car.

He keeps plug­ging away. Hour after hour in his clut­tered garage; sand­ing, grind­ing, weld­ing, and poundig can be heard, occa­sion­ally in the evening and most week­ends. You can tell this project really means a lot to him, but has taken much longer to fin­ish than antic­i­pated. As I glance back over, I notice him slumped down in his chair, staring.

“What is he doing?” I won­der to myself. “I hope he’s ok, should I go ask? I see him sit up, grum­bles, then slouches back down. “Well at least he’s mov­ing, that’s good.” He tilts his head side to side, hand on his chin. “He must be stumped about some­thing.” I look on in curios­ity. This con­tin­ues for a while, until then he reaches in his pocket and pulls out his cell phone and makes a call.

Although across the street, I make out the words “You really f***** this up, Mike.” He shouts into the phone. As he con­tin­ues yelling, he walks over and closes his garage door. That was the most emo­tion I’ve ever seen from this quiet neighbor.

I’ll never know what Mike messed up or why my neigh­bor was so mad. We’re mov­ing in a week or two, so I’ll never see the out­come of his project either. Good luck neighbor!

Write on Wednesdays

Write On Wednes­days Exer­cise 15 - Give your­self some time to notice the peo­ple around you. The peo­ple who may cross your path each day. The lady in front of you at the super­mar­ket, the man who helps the school kids cross the road, a neigh­bour, a wait­ress in a cafe, a librar­ian, any­one at all. Choose one per­son, some­one you don’t know, and this per­son will become the basis of the week’s writ­ing exer­cise. Describe this per­son as you see them, describe their sur­round­ings. Then imag­ine a prob­lem, cre­ate con­flict for this per­son. Describe the con­flict. Describe how your char­ac­ter deals with the prob­lem. The con­flict might resolve itself, it might not. It is up to you. Per­haps, the lady in the super­mar­ket has for­got­ten her wal­let. Does she bursts into tears? Maybe the librar­ian finds a lost child. The aim is to show how your char­ac­ter responds to con­flict and in the process, reveal some­thing about that char­ac­ter. Tell us their story.

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A Great One Liner

Sep7th
2011 20 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer

Write On Wednesdays

Write on Wednes­days — Exer­cise 13: A Great One Liner

This week you need to come up with one good line to describe a part of your day. It can be ‘real life’ or fic­tion. But it must tell us ‘who did what’. It has to be an amaz­ing line, like a tiny lit­tle paper plane that must travel a big dis­tance (fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing) with only a few folds … Every word in that line must earn its place, or be cut as excess bag­gage. Let’s get think­ing about each sen­tence as though every word counts, like work­ing one group of mus­cles to show how much weight they can carry.

A Great One Liner

The hour is late, and as I con­tinue to toss and turn, the pain increases, con­tin­u­ing an end­less cycle that destroys my wish for a peace­ful night’s sleep.

 

If you’re inter­ested in join­ing this writ­ing group, please go to InkPa­per­Pen to find out the details!

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A Morning Stroll

Aug23rd
2011 24 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer

Write On Wednesdays
 

My First Post for Write on Wednesdays

I want to thank Sheri Bomb for refer­ring me to this group.  Also, I want to thank Gill and Karen for com­ing up with the idea of Write on Wednes­days.  It is a great oppor­tu­nity for a com­mu­nity of writ­ers to come together.  I’ve already read some excep­tional posts and hope I can be a pos­i­tive addi­tion to the group.  This week’s exercise:

Exer­cise 11 — Take a Walk: “Come back home and write what you encoun­tered. Try to write so that your sen­tences feel the way the walk­ing felt.” Let’s toss the 5 minute sprint aside this week and instead take a lin­ger­ing stroll through our exer­cise. Par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to write a first draft (the point being to get it out on the page), then to go through and edit their piece before post­ing. We’re aim­ing to get from one place to another, tak­ing the reader with us — eco­nom­i­cally, grace­fully, elegantly.

Per­haps start with the usual stream of con­scious­ness exer­cise if you are hav­ing trou­ble get­ting started. But then stop and take a look. Edit your sen­tences and try to get them “feel­ing” the way your walk felt.

A Morn­ing Stroll

I wake up to the sound of waves crash­ing against the rocks out­side.  The mist lightly spray­ing against our win­dows.  Climb­ing out of bed, the aroma of fresh cof­fee fills the house.  My wife hands me a cup as we walk out on the porch.  We slip on our san­dals and make the short walk to the beach.

A Morning Stroll

Sun­rise

As soon as we hit the beach, I take off my san­dals and dig my feet into the warm sand.  We walk along the ocean, allow­ing the waves to sweep over our legs.  It’s cool, but refresh­ing.  Look­ing out on the hori­zon, a beau­ti­ful sun­rise begins its ascent.  It couldn’t be a more per­fect morning.

Con­tin­u­ing down the end­less miles of beach, we come to a pier.  Under­neath, a flock of seag­ulls, all con­test­ing for a meal.  The smell of rot­ting fish is pun­gent, so we quickly move on.

Look­ing around, we rec­og­nize most the faces we see.  Neigh­bors and locals are the only peo­ple out this early.  The tourists won’t start arriv­ing for another hour or two.  We say hello to some friends and then decide to grab a bite to eat.

Head­ing up to the board­walk, the smell of eggs and bacon begins fill­ing our nos­trils.  Our favorite break­fast spot opens early and the food is amaz­ing.  Real­iz­ing we have a long walk back, we eat a light meal and head home.

On our walk back home, we start notic­ing the calm of morn­ing has given way to busi­ness as usual.  Shops begin to open, eagerly await­ing the flood of tourists that visit daily.  Horns are honk­ing, morn­ing grid­lock has set in.  We reach our house just in time.

We have a busy day ahead of us, but a knock at the door echoes through the house.  And then.….

I wake up.

I suf­fer from a ter­mi­nal lung dis­ease and have tumors in my knees, so walk­ing isn’t really an option right now.  Instead, I chose to write about a dream of mine.  In the dream, my wife and I move to the beach and I was free from oxy­gen tubes and pain.  I real­ize this may not hap­pen, but a man can dream right?  Learn more about me here: About Me

This was a com­pletely fic­tional story.  I hope you enjoyed it and I look for­ward to par­tic­i­pat­ing in Writ­ing on Wednes­days from now on.  Thank you!

 

 

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