Free Write Friday on Sunday, AGAIN.

Springboard: My writing partner Faye and I picked these random words and phrases out of random books: dragging, forest, inheritance, fiddle neck, floor boards, balancing, emerge, branch, turtle. We wrote for 10 minutes.


Dragging my brother John, forest to forest, tree to tree, in search of the perfect Christmas tree, the perfect fall leaf, a crystal, a geode, some moss to sit on, to dream on, to take home in a bag, make a terrarium. The smell of spongy forest floor, that fragrance of humus our only inheritance. Fiddle neck ferns sprout through and around the bowing floorboards of the old Beck House porch. Out back, the fading remains of once glorious gardens, stone arches crumble into a luscious field of daffodils & paper-whites, narcissus & stray grape hyacinths. We gather them up, loading each other’s arms overfull, balance on sloped feet along the lip of the stone fountain, scoot through the leaning coach house, splat through the trickling branch, spill some flowers for the sake of catching a turtle, sprint home laughing, noses yellow with daffodil pollen.

Free Write Friday - on Sunday

Since I was a kid, I've had a thing for seed catalogues. I used to pore over them for hours. Still do. If you’ve never spent an afternoon with a seed catalogue, I highly recommend it. You will be amazed at the wealth of fascinating words. The same goes for field guides of any sort; trees, insects, rocks & minerals, birds, etc… I also comb estate sales and thrift stores for vintage books, and I have found several lovely old books with magnificent illustrations. Two of my favorites have dozens of paintings of Wildflowers and North American Water Fowl.

For the following Free Write, I used my book about wildflowers and a music dictionary. I randomly chose four words from each book by closing my eyes, opening the book and pointing. The flower words I picked were Delphinium, Night-smelling Epidendrum, Cranesbill and Fireweed. From the music dictionary I picked samba, flutter tonguing, plectrum and finger pluck. The parameters were to write 4 two-line stanzas.

Here’s what surfaced for me:

The Delphinium, blue breath of afternoon,
peek over the hedge, bob and samba

Night-smelling Epidendrum thrum,
flutter tonguing the gorgeous lilies

Pining Cranesbill swish, beg,
tempt and worry Queen Anne’s plectrum

Till Fireweed obliges
with a tickle and finger pluck.

Springboard du Jour: Using a seed catalogue, field guide or the like, randomly choose four words. Using a music dictionary, dance dictionary, cooking dictionary (or the like) randomly choose four more words. Write 4 two-line stanzas, each stanza using one word from each list. Remember – this is a free write – write as fast as you can and with abandon.