1. Creative Writing Journals for Week 2 Hutchinson

2. Page 18: Try This 2.2  Begin with the largest general category you can think of—minerals, food, structures— thinking big. Then narrow the category step by step, becoming more specific until you have a single detailed image. Try it again with the same large category but narrow in another direction. Can you, without naming a quality, make your image suggest an idea or direct our attitude toward the thing you describe?

3. Page 36: Try This 2.8 Write a paragraph about a thrilling or anguished incident from your childhood or adolescence. Evoke the emotion you felt in images of all five senses how the scene (perhaps including your own body) looked to you, sounded, felt, smelled, tasted. Allow yourself whatever personification, metaphor, or simile occurs to you, no matter how extreme.

4. Page 24: Try This 2.6  Quickly list as many clichéd metaphors as you can think of such as the following: the path of life, eyes like pools, crazy as a bedbug, nose to the grindstone, and so forth. Then switch half a dozen of the comparisons as in the following: eyes like a bedbug, nose to the path, the grindstone of life. Some of these might be fresh and apt! In any case, the exercise will help you become aware of clichés and so help you avoid them.

5. Page 21: Try This 2.4 A  Exchange your journals with a partner in class. Then, at the top of one page, write down a bumper sticker that you have seen and liked on the top of one of the pages of their journal. Once you’ve done this, hand the journal back to your partner.

6. Page 21: Try This 2.4 B  Describe the car (van, truck, SUV) this bumper sticker is stuck on—make, model, year, color, condition. Then, open the door. Describe the smells and textures. Name three objects you find. Name a fourth object you’re surprised to find there. Look up. Here comes the owner. Who, walking how, wearing what, carrying what, with what facial expression? The owner says something. What?

7. Page 12: Try This 1.6 Choose a different topic from the one you chose last week. Make use of these prompts or trigger lines for easy free-writes. Begin writing and keep writing. Anything at all. Whatever the prompt suggests. Keep going. A little bit more.  This journal is…  My mother used to have…  There was something about the way he…  The house we lived in…  In this dream I was…  She got out of the car…  The first thing I want in the morning…