Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Writing Adventure Group - WAG!

In the UK (and maybe the US? Have I been away for too long?) WAG stands for 'Wives and Girlfriends' -- usually of football players. Bleach blond, fake tanned and sporting hair extensions, WAG seemed the perfect ironic name for a group of struggling writers who need to force themselves into the outside world -- all thanks to Nixy Valentine, a fellow writer in Scotland I 'met' through my blog. Like me, Nixy is a transplanted North American to the UK, and she has a brilliant blog about the writerly life (not that I'm saying my blog is brilliant, but hey, why limit the comparisons?). So when she proposed the idea of writing adventures to the outside world, I was in!


I'll post the assignment each week on my blog, along with my resulting writing. The more the merrier, so please spread the word and feel free to join in!


And my apologies if this introduction doesn't make sense but I am slightly high on cold medication right now...

In thinking about spending more time Outside and how to use this to become better writers, Hip Chick Marsha and Saucy Jesse have agreed to help me with a weekly exercise adventure. All writers are welcome to join in, and we’ll be doing something a little different every week. Just made an official page for the writers group, but here are the basics:

Each week we’ll do a little mini-writing project together, and post the results on our blogs. Umm, that’s about it. We want to be very light on rules. After all, we’re all crazy artists.

This week your assignment is:

The Sky Is The Limit
Outdoor scenes often use the sky, light, or weather to create a mood. So this week let’s practice that. Go outside and look up. Describe the sky exactly as you see it. Use concrete words, no flowery language or metaphor. The idea is to let the physical speak for itself and to train us to be able to create the idea of “peaceful”, “beautiful”, “amazing” without using those kinds of empty words that tell the reader how to feel. Keep it real. No aliens or imaginings or memories. This is an observational exercise!

If you want, take a picture to put into your blog post as well as backup for your descriptions, or you can let the words stand on their own. It’s totally up to you. It can be night or day, good weather or bad. I don’t care. Don’t feel boxed in, and don’t worry about form. You can post a list of words, one line, or three paragraphs. No rules!

You have one week! (Until Tuesday, March 3rd.) When you’re finished, post the results into your blog. Please include a link back to this post, so your readers can learn more about the group adventure and participate in this and future events! Write to me at nixyvalentine AT gmail DOT com and send me your link. Next Wednesday, I will make a post of all the entries and link to them.

Let’s get other writers participating! Please tweet this page, Facebook status it or blog it!

3 comments:

Nancy J. Parra said...

Hi Marsha,

This sounds like a fabulous exercise. Count me in!

Marsha said...

Yay Nancy! :)

Angela Ackerman said...

This sounds like a great idea to get the old writing muscle flexing. I wish I had time to participate right now, but maybe down the road...