Remember When I Used to Post Daily?

Today I’m gong to write against the clock for 90 seconds at a time. I’ve not done this particular exercise in some time and am a little worried I will suck at it. That’s not the point though, so I will press forward.

I changed it to 60 seconds because the 90 was a bit longer than I was used to and I kept expecting the alarm to go off each time I came to the end of a word. It was disconcerting and made it difficult to write fast.

Mist smothered the Texas Panhandle like a killer embraces his victim. You could imagine an overpass was approaching for many seconds before…

…you realized it was never arriving. Cars speeding past you disappeared like memories into the road ahead, and everything was either milk-grey or an unremarkable yellow.

The hawk snatched the fence post like it might some edible prey but instead landed. She ruffled her feathers to stay warm.

Martin stood on the plains; he was a crumb on a grassy smooth table top. The horizon clipped the sky like a ruler set on its edge.

Somewhere in the dark—if one looked carefully—a boney lank of dog or coyote hunched among the crispy beige weeds and sage.

I seem to have developed a theme here today. I guess that’s good considering I wasn’t even certain I’d responde well at all. I fear though that my them may make it hard for me to continue because I feel compelled to stick with that theme. So I’ve written this palate cleansing picece which

The gunship sunk to a roaring hover. Mini-guns sproted from the top and rotated into position to guard the ship…

Abandoned and hungry, Allawashon rose to begin another day of walking. She’d make it to the outpost fort by evening, but not before eating a mouse raw and killing her twin…

Yikes! I don’t know what my plan with the young lady above was/is, but I want to take a moment to apologize to her sister and potentiall to the mouse. I don’t know if either had it coming, but I hope so at least.

“Snow,” Eric said. “But not snow carpetting the field and smashing out all the features. Snow like a reminder that sometimes God likes to change the color of the earth.”

The grueling pace here is always a blessing and a curse. This stumbling blurb is all I could come up withfor this particular 60 seconds.

Ring. Click. Clear. Start. Write… Shit, that’s a pain some of the time. Like now when I thought that lead off would actually take me some where but it didn’t. Maybe my next blurb ought…

SHe was hiding. It felt like she was always hiding fr some reason or another. Hiding to stay out of the cold. Hiding to stay out of the light. Hiding to stay out of the road. Today she was hiding to stay alive, and so far it was working.

But it wouldn’t work for very much longer, because she’d spotted a reason to move. A reason so compelling that it made her scalp itch. SHould she stay alive one more minute or die trying to get the thing which compelled her?

I think I’l end this exercise here. I think it went well enough and I apologize once again fro not spending more time with this exercise when I can clearly be so prolific in a short time. Rather than dumping crap out on you when I can’t make myself compose a better story on those rushed days.

595 words on day 873

Happy Birthday

Tonight is not the not we drag this bus out of the mud, but I will commit to a handful of one-minute drills:

She lay alone. Her arm draped across her naked chest poised to turn a page in a book she’d never finish read. A book that would come to remind her of what occurred next.

Leaves parted and branches snapped. A bull elk stamped out of the pines and into the wet dreary meadow. He snuffled…

“Son of a bitch.” She stared at the ungraded stack of papers slipping off the edge of her desk and clattering to the floor. Then she slapped a hand on the pile not yet betraying her. Maybe half the…

Ron tightened the knob on the tripod. The level said it was close enough to make his panoramic stitches near seamless. If only he could figured out how to get…

Gransa was taller than most of the island boys his age. His parents had come from the continent a year before he was born. They were tall. He was tall. It wasn’t good for them. It wasn….

Thom mounted the scaly beast with care. Right foot in the low stirrup. Left hand on the high stirrup then a step up. With his left foot int he high…

Wings beat down from all directions. Hummingbirds attacked Ken’s red hat and red hair. He swatted them but gently. Somehow killing a humming bird seemed bad.

Evening chill cycled with late afternoon warmth as Chris and Stacy road the convertible up and down the hills of northwest Arkansas. She liked the feeling of the…

That was more than five. And more refreshing than more bitching.

288 words on day 528

Inaugural One-minutes

The first thing I’ve written in 2010.

  1. Fog filled mornings seem to be the ones that inspire me to write but not enough to write more than these little speed drills. Hopfully I’ll wake up this year and get to writing before too long.
  2. Sebastian crept up the sunny side of the rock. He knew the shadow of his head as it crested the top might reveal his precense, but it was worth it if it didn’t. The…
  3. Water ran down the side of the mountain through roots and rocks and earth. It soaked the steep wall till they sagged with mucky moisture.
  4. Dorothy lay in the sun. In the grass. In a field just outside her Father’s house. The blades slowed the chill breeze…
  5. Trittles scurried toward the party along the crevices of the dungeon corridor. And then I slayed my inner dungeon master and wrote of it no more.
  6. Conjure, the floating city of Conjure, rested on the horizon like any distant cloud might: smudged and tinted with pink from the sunset. But it held intrigue…
  7. Then the phone rang and I ignored it. Then the phone rang and I ignored it. Then the phone rang and I answered it. It wasn’t a special call but it was a nice one. And then I hung up and wrote.
  8. Bradford skimmed the landmarks outside the cockpit. He’d picked up the habit early. Stare straight ahead into the coming fight with your eyes, but skim with your mind the…
  9. Metallic feet crunched into the meaty earth like something metalic and crunching would. The legs steadied and the gun whirled up to…

I couldn’t get to my normal twenty in the time I alloted.  Also these were generally horrid so it might have been best to stop anyhow.