The Seven Sentences Challenge

I follow a gentleman named @GeoffTalbot on Twitter.  He has a website, sevensentences.com, which he calls “Daily Inspiration for Creative People.” 

He asks writers to distill their thoughts into seven sentences only -- with a beginning, a middle and an end.  He offers creative questions that “have the power to unlock your imagination and increase your productivity.”

Now, anyone who knows me, and my belief that “if one word is good, then ten must be better,” will know what a daunting task this was. 

Seven sentences into anything, and I’m just warming up the engine.

I’ve just taken on his most recent challenge, to write about the inception, or “creative birth” of a writing accomplishment.  I enjoyed the exercise much more than I thought I would.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it works. 

These are my seven sentences:

I ask myself what makes me write, but more to the point, what made me write this?

This novel: twelve hundred words placed just so -- in this order, with emphasis, adjectives, syntax, lovers, motion, scenes, kisses, anger, laughter, tableaux, abandonment, decisions, tears -- words, and words, and more words, every one a choice.

To each day turn on the computer, tap forehead, write and delete, sip coffee, listen to music, write and delete, walk around, search for inspiration, write and delete,  then write and keep, and move on to the next words.

Like keys on a piano, words wait here to be improvised, scratched out, rewritten, sung, howled, whispered, loved, despised, accepted, owned, and finally, formed into a sort of symphony -- individual as a fingerprint.

What made me write this novel, this story, this poem?

The answer comes, and it’s simple. 

I wrote it because I cared about the people in it, and I wanted to know how it would end.

~~~~~