Then in that case it must be time for something Short & Sweet!
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| badge created by Loni Edwards |
Today is Princess Blue Kitty's first birthday. (For those of you who didn't spend the summer here, Princess Blue Kitty is my car.) And I will have you know that yesterday, on the way home from Stop & Shop her odometer rolled over 35,000 miles. That is a lot of miles to collect in one year.
But it got me to thinking about collecting things. If you have kids, spend any time around kids, or have ever been a kid, you know that kids love to collect things. Pokemon cards and baseball cards. Build-a-Bear outfits and accessories. Vacation tee-shirts. Rocks. Matchbox cars. Comic books. Beanie Babies. You name it, there's probably a kid somewhere who collects it :)
So for today's Short & Sweet think up something a kid collects. Then think about why they collect it and what that tells you about who they are.
Then, in the comments (or if you can't comment because of my @$!%*%! blog you can email me and I'll post for you) write a sentence, or a couple sentences, or however much you want, that tells us something about your character, what they collect, and why.
Who: can be as vague as "he" or "she", or as specific as "Molly, a little brown field mouse"
The Collection: can be absolutely anything you want! - the more interesting/unusual/downright bizarre the better :) (And I mean anything! Having trouble thinking something up? Just look around and pick the first thing you see - dog bones, acorns, picture frames, super balls, macaroni, potholders, toenail clippings (sure! why not go for the gross?! :)), grass trimmings, song lyrics, cocoons, seeds.... the possibilities are endless!) ... (and in case you were wondering, which I know you were since I told you to look around and pick the first thing you see, I do not have acorns and toenail clippings etc. lying around my living room... only the dog bones :))
Why: hopefully the why of this collecting will give us a peek inside your character and will be the spark that ignites story ideas :)
Here are a couple examples:
Henry collected seashells on the beach where he had fished so often with Grandpa. He searched for those that neither the ceaseless tumbling of the tide nor the careless steps of hard-soled feet had cracked or broken. Only shells that were whole and perfect made his collection. Whenever he found a new one, he brought it to Grandpa. He never said it out loud, because that would ruin it, but in his heart he harbored the hope that somehow, if he laid something flawless and familiar in Grandpa's gnarled hands, his tangled thoughts would unsnarl, and his mind would become, once again, as whole and perfect as the shells.
Nobody listened to Anne, so she collected words. Not just any words, not plain, ordinary words, but unusual, unpredictable words that rolled off her tongue in a pleasing way. Someday she would use her saved up words - words like tangential, garrulous, idiosyncratic, vituperative, onomatopoetic, ecclesiastical and catastrophic - sprinkle them into her speech like spices, and then, people would listen! How could they not?
His shoelace collection started because of the orange ones he found with the baseballs on them. Next he discovered the blue ones with green lizards, and after that, yellow ones with NASCAR flags. He hung them from the handlebars of his bike, like streamers, and hoped that when he sped past she would look up from where she sat on the bottom step of her front porch stringing beads.
Or you can go as simple as:
Mabel collected milkweed pods because she liked to open them up, pull the soft silk from inside, tuck it into her hair and pretend she was an ancient enchantress in a forbidden forest.
Get the idea?
Even if your own character/collection doesn't spark a story for you, someone else's might. And your offering might spark a story for somebody else! So let's all share. And please feel free to write as many as you'd like! :)
Shall we fire up our imaginations and see what kind of stories we can spark with our collections?
Have fun, everyone! I can't wait to see what you come up with! :) Hopefully we'll be so inspired that we won't be able to write fast enough! :)
P.S. If anyone happened to take the new Short & Sweet badge 2 weeks ago when I first put it up, please swap it for this one - the first one was missing the kitty's whiskers! :)
