I couldn't do it.
The thought brought out
a thin white lab coat
with a pushpin
turned into a pithing needle.
Even the ratty old copy of Ethan Frome
(required reading with its dreadful broken pickle dish)
was spared the stabbing
for the sake of inspiration.
As much as I despised the story,
the book still lives and breathes--
its yellowed pages
like wrinkles on the face of an old friend.
The prompt for April 1, 2013 was submitted by Jim Knowles from Andover Massachusetts:
The "push-pin with coherence" method.
1) get an old or clearance book (yellowed paper pierces easily) (eloquent author makes it cool)
2) wiggle/pierce a pushpin through the book in a spot
3) So it is not random, pick any word from within one inch of the hole on each page. Your mind will try to force some order, to ‘cohere’ the words, as you pick the next and the next, the fit the prior words.
4) Now, when you have about 20 to 100 words, insert connecting words and shift the words you took (verb tense, synonym, etc)
5) You should see a theme emerge, with some catchy phrases. Feel free to chuck or rewrite at this point. There are scenes emerging, hopefully. Oddly enough, the original author counts. Former best sellers from the dollar store can be good. Old, badly oxidized acid paper makes things easy... those cheap books at the used book store that are crumbling. the job easy.
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