Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1998 22:36:25 -0500
From: "a bibliobibuli! beware, beware!" <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      [WRITERS] EXERCISE: Pilgrimage (Ararat - 2)

Ararat

We had trouble with teachers in Cougar Canyon.  It's just an accommodation
school anyway, isolated and so unhandy to anything.  There's really nothing
to hold a teacher.  But the way the People bring for their young, in
quantities and with regularity, even our small Group can usually muster the
nine necessary for the county superintendent to arrange for the schooling
for the year.

That's the second paragraph from Pilgrimage by Zenna Henderson. Copyright
1961, printed by Avon books, New York NY.

Here's my challenge.

I am posting six other opening paragraphs from the book so there will be
seven opening paragraphs that you can use.  (Why does this book have seven
starting paragraphs? One is from the framing story, the other six are
basically stand-alone short stories.)

Your job is to write stories starting from Zenna Henderson's paragraphs.

Write them, polish them, and send me your best. No more than two stories
per author per paragraph (14 stories per author? That's not a limitation,
that's an invitation to over extend yourself).

Length? Short stories, remember? So, how about 3,000 words max.

Remember, send your stories to mbarker@mit.edu so that I can repost them
anonymously. I will also put copies on a Web page.

Closing date for the last submissions: January 20, 1999
Reading and Voting: January 21 to January 27

Two winners, each to receive a copy of Pilgrimage by Zenna Henderson.

and they're sharpening their pencils, flattening out the curled sheets,
almost ready to...
WRITE!


"Take me up into your mind once or twice before I die (you know why: just
because the eyes of you and me will be full of dirt some day).  Quickly take
me up into the bright child of your mind."  Edward Estlin Cummings

tink