The heat was broken at the usually warm and friendly Cyclops Books tonight, so those of use who went to the MWA Baltimore meeting to do a little writing did so with numb fingers, reading our work with voices thinned from the cold.
Strawberry Freeze is second from the top.
Exercise #1 was to dig into a bag of paint color cards and pick a set of colors that resonated either personally or for a character, then to pick one color on the card and answer a bunch of questions about ourselves or a character, based on the color selected. The questions were the usual sort of thing: what shape is this, what sound, what kind of car does this person drive, etc. Every time I do an exercise like this I am struck by how goofy and how incredibly useful it is. Simply asking to make illogical leaps – what kind of bird this person based on a color would be – opens the door.
As soon as I picked Strawberry Freeze, I knew this color was not just me, nor was it a character I have been working with this week, but some one new. “I am a frozen strawberry, preserved just the way you want me to be, sweet, picked clean of my stem and thorny brush. When you remember me, the hum and rush of the air conditioner is Ave Maria and the wheezing engine of the old silver Ford Escort is a silver flute trilling on a summer night.”
Exercise #2 was writing in celebration of something that isn’t usually celebrated. The workshop leader gave an example of writing a celebration of bare feet in sunlight (safe to say she has missed huge sections of the internet). I wrote a short ode to Google Analytics. By that time I was so cold I could barely write, having gone rapidly from strawberry freeze to Lauren freeze, but it is something I may want to rework. Excerpt:
Oh, Google Analytics
Arbiter of virtual affection
Offers sweetly URLS
That point in my direction
27 visits, 38 page views
Sort by location, host or server
I’m a fool for data, Google
Your capture has my fervor
The last exercise was to make a list of things you need to know to live.
1. Know where to find food and other things that nourish you: the city, woods, a field, the beach, home.
2. Know where to find shelter, and other things that protect you: an apartment, tree, brush, a pier, home.
3. Know where to find clothing, and other ways to announce yourself to the world: a store, fig leaf, laurel garland, shell necklace, home.
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It hasn’t been warm in there since September.
Yes, but still true that the heat was broken last night, right? And brrrrrrr.
Indeed. I can’t imagine how any of you were physically able to write in there.