The Writers Toolbox & Free Writing II

Another short writing exercise at this week’s writing group drawn from the Writers Tool Box provided here by way of example and because I don’t often get to do creative writing, and when I do I feel like preserving it. Not sure if that is just ego or good/bad writing practice. This blog though, is a place to capture ideas, it’s a sketch book of sorts. So, I have parked the writing here for now.

Rules: take three cards, turn the first over and free write for 3 minutes in response to the cues on the card, be specific in description of objects, things and places. After three minutes turn over the next card and continue the story responding to the cue on the card. Repeat for the third card.

My cards were: Jenny Craig Centre, November in Cincinnati, sound of Henry crying.

THE STORY

The Jenny Craig Centre sat atop a tall jutting rock that peered out into the ocean mist, the bough of a mysterious cutter breaking through the still morning waters. Sunlight edged over the nearby hills, verdant and strewn with woolly mittens, frosty, glistening in the golden rays, chilled under the blue sky, a spring morning singing lark like as it bursts forth blindingly, burning off the sea haze and leaving a salty waft in the air.

It was nothing like November in Cincinnati. Nothing at all, though, it is worth noting that my memory of that time is a hazy as the mist now departing the still seas around the Jenny Craig Centre. The black Mercedes taxi wound its way up the raggedy hedged country lane, bouncing over the potholes, listing around the sharp corners, pausing half in ditches to let others pass downhill towards the chocolate box village that nestled around a smattering of fishing boats, nets hanging from their beams.

In the back of the taxi I could hear the sound of Henry quietly crying. There is not much to say about that. She could see her future ahead clearer than I could see my past. Perhaps her crystal vision would shock me from my slumbers, but I doubted it. The cool sun now risen blessing the green and pleasant land as we rolled into the long driveway, under the gated arch of the Jenney Craig Centre. If anything, Cincinati seemed like a dream, slipping away just as the foggy delirium of sleep creeps away like a ghost at a séance.

Comments from the group: we wonder what the Jenny Craig Centre is.