Ideas from the sole

Last night was proof that even the smallest suggestion can result in the biggest idea. Heather was our facilitator and the writing warm up was a great as ever. Heather brought with her an array of unique items, all no bigger than what you can fit in one hand and each with distinct characteristics. We were to choose an item and write. Simple and creative. Many of us were coming off of poetry mode after a week of getting ready for the poetry contest on the 30th. Even Mike wrote a poem, more to his own surprise than anyone else's.

For the main event Heather's idea was simple, "shoe on the road", and from it all members that turned up came with varying ideas and some of the best writing we've heard to date.

Nola started us off with her first person journey from the shoe's comedic perspective. Susan weaved her story of a satin Italian hand carved heel through three generations of shoe wearers until it met its fate. Nicole (I) made the shoe the victim of a sour relationship that ultimately panned out on a city freeway. Margaret inspired us with an uplifting Father/Son piece. Heather continued with three shorter pieces one in particular that dug deep with feelings of grief. Mike was so inspired by the prompt he completed the first chapter of a new mystery novel that involved several fingers of Highland Park Single Malt.

There was plenty of applause and much hootin' &hollerin'.  I'm particularly proud to say that we're are slowly inching our way into a more critical mind frame. Heather had some suggestions for critiquing one another's work; I think we should try this at our next meeting.
1. What would you like to hear more of?
2. What did you appreciate?
3. What would you have approached differently?

I think this meeting has definitely inspired me to keep the prompts simple more often than not. With simple prompts the imagination opens a gate to a huge garden of possibility. What fun!

See new "writing prompts" in the column to the left...

The next meeting will be Tuesday May 11th. I will be loosely facilitating (I'll just bring a warm up exercise). We'll be changing the format slightly for this meeting. Many of us have been working on larger manuscripts and so this will be an opportunity to bring print-outs for everyone to look over or take home. Alternately between now and then we will also be emailing one another with our writing. I know all those in attendance last night will be happy to read, edit and give feedback so let's get those pieces circulating!


Nice work everyone!