Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 10:37:00 -0500 From: "a bibliobibuli! beware, beware!" Subject: [WRITERS] EXERCISE: Pilgrimage (Pottage - 4) Pottage You get tired of teaching after a while. Well, maybe not of teaching itself, because it's insidious and remains a tug in the blood for all of your life, but there comes a day when you look down at the paper you're grading or listen to an answer you're giving a child and you get a _boinnng!_ feeling. And each reverberation of the _boing_ is a year in your life, another set of children through your hands, another beat in monotony, and it's frightening. The value of the work you're doing doesn't enter into it at that moment and the monotony is bitter on your tongue. That's the fourth 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