Saturday, June 20, 2009

100 Days to More Brilliant Writing Challenge: Week #1

Monday, June 22 – Sunday June 28, 2009 § Days #1 - #5

Welcome to the first week of the 100 Days . . . Challenge, where we can write it, one minute at a time!

How to get started:

  1. Download and print the tracker for weeks #1 – 5 (the link is on the right hand side of the blog)
  2. Post the tracker on your fridge or wherever you will see it daily (consider giving yourself rewards for meeting weekly goals)
  3. Start writing. All you need to do to meet this week's challenge is write on 5 separate days of the week for a minimum of 15 minutes each day and complete the weekly exercise (you can complete this during one of your 15-minute writing sessions, if you like)
  4. Feel free to post a small section of your writing, tell us what you achieved during the week, or simply let us know that you met the weekly goal (this will help keep us inspired and moving forward)

This week's exercise: Select a novel or story that you love. Read a favorite paragraph several times. Then write for a minimum of fifteen minutes in that same style. This means you can copy tone, sentence structure, style, pacing, topic, or whatever you like most about the passage.

Successfully complete this week's challenge and you earn the rank of Copycat.

7 comments:

LucindaF said...

I won't be at my computer this week, so I will be doing it the old fashion way, pen and paper.

Thanks for the challenge.

LucindaF said...

Thought I'd do my copy-cat before I left. I am copying C.S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Here is his pp:

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off-just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt-and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.

Mine:

There he was outside the chapel door, like I had seen him a thousand times before, only this time he caught my eye-and something jumped inside me:just a little jump, just enough to notice how his shoulder rested ever so gently against the stone wall, his hair danced, and his blue eyes smiled when they looked my way. And there I stood as silly as the fluttering birds in spring and different than I had ever been.

Sail said...

I wrote for 30 minutes today. Tried to add emotion (I mean, Emotion and thus Tension and Authenticity) into a scene that I drafted last week. Twas brillig!

Onto day #2.

whirligigdaisy said...

There is a timer now. How cool is that?!

Betty Edit said...

Yeah, cool timer. And good job, LucindaF for posting your writing! I decided for my writing to copy the first page of Sharon Creech's Heartbeat for a novel I'm writing about a poet. Don't know if I'll keep it or not, but it was a fun exercise.

My writing:



Poems


Skritchy-scratch, skritchy-scratch
tip of pen licking the paper
as it zooms zooms zooms
through the words and in the words
bleeding through the fibered sheet
slanting across lines

writing down
skritchy-scratch, skritchy-scratch
words and lines
lines and words
of each new sweet stanza

skritchy-scratch, skritchy-scratch,
sensing I could sing every stroke
but putting my pen
skritchy-scratch, skritchy-scratch

to the paper

at least for now...



Sharon Creech's Heartbeat



Footfalls


Thump-thump, thump-thump
bare feet hitting the grass
as I run run run
in the air and like the air
weaving through the trees
skimming over the ground

touching down
thump-thump, thump-thump
here and there
there and here
in the soft damp grass

thump-thump, thump-thump
knowing I could fly fly fly
but letting my feet
thump-thump, thump-thump

touch the earth

at least for now...

whirligigdaisy said...

The timer ROCKS!!!

My Manuscript Stinks Society said...

Are you using the timer?

I love it!