Capture one strong image every single day in July. You can describe the image, create a metaphor with the image, explore the image philosophically.
Post and share some of your favorites here.
A community of children's and young adult writers who find acceptance through rejection.
10 comments:
I Practice Blind:
I like to close my eyes and learn the map of the floor. Read the textures and follow the feel. The compacted carpet greets my toes when I slide out of bed. Carpet made viscous by the layer of dog hair. Two steps then the cool hard slap of the tile. The coolness greets me like the slap of an old farmer. Sudden and calloused. Cold and gritty.
-Mike Blakesley
Fantastic, Mike!
Do you have any others? Does anyone else have any great images to share?
-MMS Society
My favorite verb was SLAPS.
Also, this is a nice line: "Read the textures and follow the feel."
Part of a scene:
The room, my room, is decorated in shades of beige. The walls are the color of sun-bleached grass, the rug next to the bed is a dark beige, and the gigantic king size bedspread is an intricate geometric pattern of beiges, yellows, and gold; even the wood floor is blonde.
"I guess it's a little plain in here," Aunt Bonnie says. "We can paint, if you want. Any color. What colors do you like? Lavender? Green? Periwinkle? We'll make it feel like home."
At home, I have a single bed with my favorite striped blanket bunched on top. The walls are plain old white, but Lydia's cards are taped all over the inside of my door and there are strings of fishing line crisscrossing the room with the magazine pictures Lydia and I cut out dangling from them.
--Lisa
My friend came and visited from Kansas; she was dismayed to find everything so hazy.
"It's so ugly," she said.
But I like it, I think. In a way, it's quite pretty. The haziness makes the mountains like thin blue paper cutouts, pasted on top of each other in just a slight shade darker than the sky, like a paper mountain collage. The foreground of spikey beige and browns and patches of greens stood out in stark relief. It was a well-composed picture where the artist brought the saturated front to focus. I liked it.
At Disneyland I sat on a bench and watched people walk down the street. Of course there are hordes of people at Disneyland, but only two stood out to me: a young man, maybe mid-twenties or so, and a young woman who was with him, about the same age.
He only stood out because she did. She had long blonde hair and I forget what else because what I noticed most was her smile: she looked genuinely happy.
She was not holding his hand, or walking arm in arm, but her head was turned towards his, and she was unaware of anything else around her. Or perhaps it wasn't so much that she was unaware, more that it really didn't matter that she was at Disneyland--she could've been anywhere with him and looked the same.
Her smile was pure. It was not plastic, or false, or lustful, or only half-meant, or even drippy. It was earnest and full of love.
I normally want to puke when I see people like that. But she wasn't fawning or flirtatious, she was simply happy. She loved that he was there with her, and that she was there with him, and that they enjoyed one another's company.
Maybe they were married. Maybe they were lovers. Maybe they were brother and sister, or maybe just friends. I don't know. I can't even really tell you what she looked like besides that she had blonde hair.
But for me, it's enough to know that I saw her smiling, and it was the truest smile I've ever seen.
heather, i like your mention of the artist.
sail, i like especially the description of the room at home. (in the preceding paragraph you might want to consider some other tones for green--"green" sounds pretty nasally) ;o)
mike, i like the idea of practicing blind, and of the map of the floor.
My roommates and I took a trip down to the Narrows, which I'd never seen before. As we started our hike and got a couple miles out, the canyon walls narrowed and towered over us like castle turrets. The canyon walls were like nothing I'd ever seen before-intricately curved, smooth and delicate, almost like hand-blown glass. They felt the cool caress of the river and the harsh rays of the sun. These walls held secrets, small caverns and nooks carved by years of patient ebbs and flows. Often, we had to touch the walls when wading through particularly choppy water. The lower part of the walls oozed with moss, while the higher parts felt warm and dry from the heat. The most amazing thing was looking up to see the sky peeking over the cavern walls and feeling simultaneously protected and vulnerable to the wonderful beauty all around. It truly was a unique experience.
PS-Got a rejection letter from highlights...good news right? Hahah :)
PS again-I really loved reading all these comments. There's a lot of talent here!
It's always good news when you get a rejection letter!
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