Freewriting

I’ve just found that word on the internet. It’s all about writing without stopping or censoring, which I’ve taken to mean editing. Censoring would probably involve me laying out carefully aligned black blocks over the best parts of my blog (assuming I can find any black blocks or indeed best parts) and only publishing the redacted version.

Redacted. That’s a word I’ve always wanted to get into a story. This doesn’t count as a story so it only gets a half-tick in pencil. I’ve also always wanted to write a character who says things like secure the perimeter.

But that’s another story.

Anyway I stumbled across the word freewriting on the first hit I got for the search random writing prompts. The web page in question has a random subject generator. It’s got a big green button and everything. For my moment in the freewriting sun I was given:-

Write about a time when you had to forgive someone.

The idea was for me to write for ten minutes from that prompt. This presented me with two immediate challenges.

1. It’s a boring prompt. So like there was this guy and he like totally ruined my day but instead of writing a really funny and savage attack on him via the passive aggressive middle class rebellion medium of a blog post I decided to like turn the other cheek and stuff.

Yawn.

2. I knew I’d waste at least eight minutes writing something about my experiences leading up to the actual prompt. And I was right.

So I clicked again and was rewarded with:-

Write about an ornament.

Really? An ornament?

Fine, here’s two minutes of freewriting about an ornament.

I don’t own many ornaments or items that could be considered ornamental. I’ve got two genuine Groggs (rugby player caricature figurines for those who don’t know them – I might take a picture for this post) but I’m not entirely certain they qualify as ornaments.

OK let’s agree that they do.

One is of Jonathan Davies the other is of Bryan Habana and they were a wedding present from a dear friend of mine.

There they were minding their own business up on the bookshelf when a small crazed child we will lovingly refer to as Chucky climbed up, grabbed one and smashed it on the floor in a fit of rage. Alright it wasn’t smashed as such but it was broken into multiple pieces.

A small part of me knows that if the Jonathan Davies figure had been smashed the child would have probably gone up on eBay. Luckily for her Habana got the treatment and was repairable and so I was able to forgive her.

…and there we have it ladies and gentlemen, an ornament story that somehow tied back to a time I forgave someone and nailed both prompts…

Wait…what do you mean it took too long? You can’t exclude my reference to the initial prompt simply based on the ticking of a clock purportedly measuring an abstract concept…fine…whatever. I forgive you. See if I don’t turn that into its own blog post.

Woohoo! Five hundred words. Bedtime.