Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:33:53 -0500 From: the limbs of a dismembered poet Subject: [WRITERS] EXERCISE: three paragraphs forward! [have you considered writing erotica? Take a look at Monica's Erotica Contest , write, write, write, climax! And send that to "Merideth Johnston" before Valentine's Day is over.] From the end of Not Quite Dead Enough by Rex Stout, p. 158... "Did you sit on their laps when you were a baby, or is it a recently formed habit?" She chuckled and gurgled, or whatever that noise was. "That," she said, "is nothing but congenital friendly exuberance. Also I feel rather protective about them. I feel that way, more or less, about lots of men -- those I don't dislike. They're so darned dumb." I grinned at her. "Fifty years from now I'll remind you of that, and you'll claim you never said it." I got in the cab. "For myself I don't care, but my colleagues, one billion human males, are counting on me." All right, there are your three paragraphs. Take a few minutes to think about who he is and who she is and just where the cab may take them... think about some other gestures of "congenital friendly exuberance" that might occur. Do you think she will sit in his lap? And what else... Write, write, write. "How comes it...that no man living is content with the lot that either his choice has given him, or chance has thrown in his way, but each has praise for those who follow other paths?" Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] 65-8 B.C. tink