Date:         Fri, 1 Jan 1999 13:25:45 -0500
From: "a bibliobibuli! beware, beware!" <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      [WRITERS] EXERCISE: Was it a dream?

a quick, short exercise...

The situation is simple.  One character has seen, heard, perhaps experienced
something.  It could be extraordinary (a dragon sat on my car!  An angel
talked to me!  A devil made me an offer like nothing I had ever imagined!
Or something really exciting that you come up with :-) or fairly ordinary
(she kissed me!  I forgot where I was going.  The cat had four kittens.)

The problem is simple.  No one else believes them.  No one else saw it.  No
one else heard it.  There must be a rational explanation for what you
thought happened.  You must have been imagining things.

Resolution?  That's really up to you.  Whether it is the somewhat sad
acceptance that miracles could never happen to me (with a little twist?  A
sparkle of magic dust in the pocket of that jacket?  Or just a twinkle in
the eye of the dog that talked?) or the fun and romance of sharing a secret
unknown to most of the world with a special friend who has also seen the
Phoenix flying across the rainbow, heard the drumming of the trolls hiding
in the subway mazes, or felt the touch of a goddess striding through the
early morning stillness of a city park spreading blessings on all that she
met...

Or whether you have some other resolution (warning!  This sentence is so far
out of control that there is no going back and fixing it, so we'll just let
it scurry off into the distance, unfinished and misshapen, a runaway leakage
of words sprouting merrily across the screens of our days...)

So -- a simple beginning with something happening.  A middle full of
complexity, confusion, frustration, disbelief.  Making us really feel the
conflict and the building tension between insisting on our own experience
vs. going along with the accepted wisdom -- this is where the bulk of the
story is, so don't hurry through it.

And when the tension is at its highest, lead us into the resolution that you
picked.

Was it a dream?

Only the author knows for sure...

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