This summer, one of the classes I took was Intro to Creative Writing. Now, I've been writing for years, but my school is one of the traditional schools who's writing program focuses on literary fiction and my interest is mainly in genre, so this is a fun challenge for me and I think I learned some new things (including an appreciation of writing literary short stories). One my first days of class we talked about Faulkner and his writing style, then my professor gave us an assignment. He wanted us to describe where we (or a completely fictional character) were from in a grammatically correct, 150 word sentence. If that sounds challenging, then let me tell you, it is. But it forces your mind to think in a different way and you to write in an out-of-the-box style. Here is the one I did. Try it yourself and see where your mind takes you.
I was born in a small town in south Georgia- no place you would have ever heard of- where the cows out numbered the people three to one, everybody knew everyone else's business, and it was a big deal when a Dairy Queen was built in the center of the downtown square (where old man Richardson's feed store was before he followed his wife, dead these past fifteen years, to the great pasture in the sky); we were never a town for fast food chains or none of those corporate stores- I never heard of Wal-Mart until I moved up here to Atlanta and the closest mall and movie theater was twenty miles away (every fourth Saturday Mama would take me and lil Jo Ann to see a movie and buy a dress)- the tallest building in town was four story city hall, so you can imagine my amazement seeing all these skyscrappers here...maybe that's why I decided to get my education here,you know, experience something new, expand my horizons.
