Steering My Craft: Short Sentences

This blog post is part of an effort to refine my own work as a writer, and to strengthen my practice as a writing teacher. For each exercise, I’ll provide the directions, my effort, and a short reflection.

The Assignment: Craft a paragraph using short sentences (maximum 7 words each). No sentence fragments are allowed!

FIRST ATTEMPT
Among it all, I sit. Sunlight lulls my eyes closed. I offer a moment of meditation. Sweat descends down my neck. The breeze lifts it away. A fly lands on my arm. It breaks my trance. Steady hums of cicadas pull me back. I store these days for February.

Mini-Reflection: This is a nice slice of life, but it’s also much shorter than the 100 or so words Ursula Le Guin called for. This writing feels more like a cop-out. I pushed myself towards another attempt.

NEXT ATTEMPT
Time to get up. She sniffs, scratches, stretches. Ambles over to the bed. An arm hangs over the side. She huffs, then nudges. The arm stays limp. She huffs, nudges, then growls. Fingers wiggle. She nudges, then grumbles again. A hand scrunches fur, then absently strokes. She wags, then she licks. She licks some more. She keeps licking until her human wakes. He sniffs, scratches, stretches. Time to get up.

Reflection: I can’t say I’m overwhelmed by the writing I did for either of these passages. I’m glad I was able to create a couple of vivid moments. For me, the biggest challenge was avoiding sentence fragments. As a poet, I like being able to play with language in that way, and it’s kind of a bummer that I had my hands tied with that one.