Indigenous Writing

The magnificent Sally Hanan and I led a creative writing workshop today through the School of Kreative Arts (Austin); it was a lot of fun. We had low turnout but high quality. Shared journeys and stories carried us along, the writing was free, and nary an apostrophe was misplaced. Assignments include haiku, a 50 word story, the same story in 25 words or less, and a seven minute story based on a color, two names, weather and a situation.

Big surprises included either how hard it is to tell a story in 50 words or how much you can say in so little (depending on who was being surprised) and how short a time seven minutes is (I was nowhere near done).

Here are the pieces I wrote, absent the seven minute challenge. I want to finish that one.

Caffeine Love

Drinking coffee is
one of life's simple pleasures.
Starbucks? Not so much.

Enamel Removal

My dentist wondered,
"What have you done to your teeth?"
Little totem poles...

Baylor Breeding

I loved my bear feet.
My girlfriend said it was odd;
they had fur and claws.

My 50 word story came in at exactly 50 words:

Pondering the last tomato, Jane pushed her salad away. With her husband dead, she could no longer write haiku. "Perhaps," she thought, "I could write limericks. Solemn limericks... grave limericks." A childlike smile drifted across her face. "For his headstone."
Looking for asparagus but finding none, she ate the tomato.

Cutting it exactly in half, I ended up with:

Sick of tomatoes, Jane pushed away her salad. With Gerald dead, she couldn't keep writing haiku. Perhaps grave limericks? She found she'd eaten the tomato.

I prefer the 50 word version. What do you think? And did any of the haiku strike your fancy?

By the way, the fact that the super shorts begin with eating salads is Sally's fault.