Afternoon delights

I just got back from a one day writing course at City Lit, where we used word games to free up our creativity. It was really good. One exercise had us write down the letters in the alphabet, but in a completely jumbled up, random order, and then write something where each word had to start with the letters, in the order that we'd written them down. We only had a few minutes on that exercise - I did one:

Voluptuous, flyaway Bertha jumped neatly round Will, and emphatically indicated my quail.
"Your Zanzibarian cockerell, Gideon, kicked over Sophie's xylophone! Damned hellish loose poultry. Too unfortunate."

Then I had some time left so I did another one:

Very fortunate boys jostle near Ronaldo,
Wishing avidly, excitedly, impossibly.
More queuing yesterday,
Zebra crossing,
Goal kick,
One shot,
X-box,
Desperation, hope, love.
Please touch us.

I really liked the way that the constriction of the 26 letters forced you into an unexpected place. If you'd asked me to write a 26 word story, I'd never have come up with either of those. And it was surprising how, both times, the first three or four words set the tone and the pace for the rest of the piece. Good exercise.

For another game, we were asked to draw six columns on a piece of paper, and label each one with Adjective, Noun, Adverb, Verb, Adjective, Noun. In the first column, we wrote four adjectives. Then we folded over the piece of paper so our words were hidden, and passed it on round the room, filling in the columns on different pieces of paper each time. Eventually, we unfolded one piece of paper each and had four different six word phrases in front of us. The last line of mine read: 'Lumpen boy painfully snogs warm farmer.' Brilliant.

A really enjoyable day, capped off with the purchase of an amazing cream and sequined jumper in the lunchbreak. Back at home now, with dishwasher humming and popcorn maker calling. Proper weekend summary to follow tomorrow in some downtime. Adios.