Wednesday 22 September: Excercise 2. First sentence, write for one hour ...

 This story springs from another sentence from the same source - this is my second go at it, I hated my first try. So today I remembered to give myself permission to abandon a story that really isn't working for me. I like this effort better than yesterday's, but the similarity of the set up created quite a strong resistance for me.  All this week, I will just pick up the Excercise and write, without knowing where it will end up. 

If you like, you can leave an excercise for me in the comments - or tweet me if you prefer. I will keep a running list as they are gifted to me, and do them in chronological order. 

My partner suggested I do this for a whole year. On day two that feels daunting... But to be honest the project is an attempt to discipline myself to write, not just talk about it - so maybe I should commit to a whole year of a story every day, but not yet.

Next week I plan to spend 10 minutes before starting - plotting in some way. Nothing too fancy the aim is to write and write everyday. It might be some weeks before any of this gets any good.  For now I am happy with a few moments of sparkle. Oh! and I am not hampering myself with worry about punctuation too much either. All in good time.

Damn! He hadn't thought about the creaking step on the staircase...

He had planned everything down to the last little detail, had three practice runs right up to the last bit down the back stairs. He'd even strangled a couple of live gerbils to get the feel of what it's like to actually take a life.

Excercise 1 - first sentence, keep writing to the end ...

The first sentence is in blue - I was also given a business card.

She stopped running  and watched the bus pull away from her. She panted. There was no way she’d be back in time to cover it up now…

Approaching slowly from the other direction was a little old lady, almost impossilbly bent over her shopping trolley, which served as both zimmer frame and shopping basket.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle stop. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle … The inexorable, slow progress made X feel even more frustrated.

Wednesday's shoe has far to go...

shh...Keep this under your hat. I'm fully intending to create a wordpress site just as soon as I can choose a skin and organise a host, and get off my arse and plan it up good. In the meantime I've returned to my old faithful companion, Blogger.com.

Oh blogger {sighs} you are so easy and familiar, like the warm, strong arms of an old lover, I know I should move on, but it's late, I'm tired and here you are offering an uncomplicated fix. I probably won't even feel guilty in the morning...

My first ever blogger blog was way back in the early days with a daily 'dear diary' offering for my family and mates to check in on my doings around the globe. That's long lost now - if anyone knows how to retrieve an ancient blog from the internet's deep storage - I'd be grateful for your advice. It's of absolutely no interest to anyone but me - but there's history in those long lost posts.

I've a vague plan to use this little 'pop-up' blog to keep track of my renewed pledge to get on and write some stuff. Some story stuff. It'll be useful to have it all in one place - and out from my head, off the messy pages of my notebooks and into a more re-writeable format.

So there'll be no critical comments allowed from you, my imaginary readers, in the first few weeks, maybe longer - that will depend on how I go. When incubating a new project you need to protect it from the harsh light of criticsm. It's my blog I can bloody well do what I like. So there.

There will be some shoe related nonsense - after all what is life without wonderful shoes, it's a dull old business that's for sure. However this little blog is to nurture my little dream - to write some stories, maybe get good enough to push out a book or two and to practice writing in lots of different forms to get better at it - more worthy of an audience.