I sent some wonderfully inventive and humorous posts to update you on my innermost thoughts and alas the e-mail server ate them. While they were delightful they were also timely so taking the effort to re-post them wouldn't be any fun. Why do I tell you this? Writers block!
Mr. Bell - my high school English teacher taught us a writing technique that was basically stream of conscience writing. He would tell us to take a blank page of paper and a pen and write for an extended period of time and if we ran out of things to say then we were to repeat the last word we wrote over and over until something else came to mind. It was nutty - I mean PAPER AND PEN!? No one does that anymore. However the writing without editing was a way to get over the scary white space.
We were lucky to have Mr. Bell in our rural community; he was a great teacher. He cared about the students and challenged each of us to be better. He is is responsible for my love of words, especially fake words. We were encouraged to find words that we didn't know and incorporate them into our vocabulary. He also had us make up words as a fun exercise. I guess he's the inspiration for the fictionary. Yaz talks to this day about our friend Jackson who came up with a new word that combined Idiot and Stupid: "Stup-Id" Yes, Jackson, but it still spells Stupid.
Mr. Bell was also really brave. He lent his only car to the Honor Society kids to run an errand during the school day. Oh Mr. Bell - Connie Gore and I were NOT to be trusted! Actually, I was never blessed with the "get in trouble" gene. I skipped school once in four years and my parents knew before I got home. SAD. On our Senior Skip day I told my parents ahead of time... what a goodie goodie. No wonder my brother tried to kick my ass all the time.
1 comment:
I would think "stream of conscience" writing might go something like:
"I'm a bad person I shouldn't have said those shoes looked sensational but she had already worn them outside. Why did I have to take the larger of the two pieces of pie? That squirrel I ran over five years ago was so cute, I wonder if he/she had a family. I hope they didn't starve because they couldn't find the buried stash of nuts. Why did I eat most of the cashews out of those mixed nuts and then tell everyone that 'Kirkland brand mixed nuts are kind of heavy on the peanuts'? I wish I could have been able to face up to what happened to Connie Gore during our 'errand' and that I remembered where I hid her body. God, her family deserves some kind of closure . . ."
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