Tag Archives: J.T. Evans

February Word Challenge, Day 1

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Prompts Leave a reply

(As noted in my last post, today begins the February Word Challenge proposed by J.T. Evans.)

My five random words for today’s exercise are chapel, masking tape, peanut, gang, and copier.

Chosen word for free association: copier
photocopy, scribe, illuminated manuscript, The Secret of Kells, tower, Vikings, raids

Exercise:
Smoke drifted on the Irish wind, obscuring at times the high crosses and five-windowed tower of the Kells monastery. The Book rested safely on its pedestal, high in the tower, while Viking raiders circled below, oblivious to its presence.

(Well, that’s not much, but it’s only a 10 minute exercise.)

February Word Challenge (as proposed by J.T. Evans)

By lytspeed Posted in February Word Challenge, Writing Leave a reply

J.T. Evans is a Colorado Springs writer, and he issued a challenge to his writer friends. In a nutshell, he’s challenging us to complete a daily ten minute writing exercise, recording each day’s process in our blogs (or Facebook Timelines, or whatever.) Direct from the link above:

The challenge goes like this:

  1. Pick a random word from the dictionary (I have a Perl script snagging 5 random words from the dictionary for me, and I’m picking one of those.)
  2. Free associate words (or very short phrases) based on that word for three minutes.
  3. Pick one of those words (or phrases) or the original word and write something creative based on this for five minutes.
  4. The whole exercise, including transition and thinking time should take no more than ten minutes.

J.T. is using a Perl script to generate his prompts, but for those who are not sure they have time to learn Perl in the 28 days before the contest ends, he generously provided this link, as well.

I’m going to give this a shot. I’m doing a lot of musical stuff right now, too, but I should be able to manage ten minutes per day. I want something to help keep my writing skills sharp, even if my creativity focus has shifted a bit at the moment.