Spoken Word

I went to an event last night at St. Veronus, which was part of Peterborough Arts week. It was a 'write-off' of sorts. Each person in attendance was given a small piece of paper and asked to write out a sentence. These were placed in a bucket, and then one was selected. There were 5 or 6 writers competing, who had 20 minutes to compose a short story, poem, or some other form of writing, based on the sentence.

My sentence got chosen. Which bothered me, because it was an unoriginal sentence. I had an original thought, but it got stolen by one of the other people in our group. Then, I panicked when the woman came around with her '20 seconds!!' warning. I wrote the first thing that popped into my head, 'There are not enough life boats for everyone on board.'

Titanic had a profound impact on my subconscious.

The stories were all great. The talented writers were capable of using it well. Still, I found myself thinking of several better sentences which I would have been proud to have selected, instead of the one I wrote.

"No one could have predicted what happened next."

See, a sentence like that is open ended. It doesn't lead a writer into nautical journeys. The story likely won't start with a line like "The fog was thick."

"She was right, the shoe does fit."

"No, I'm serious, my mom's apple pie is better than this."

I read through the other entries at the end of the night. Some of them were great, and some, on par with mine. My favorite though was:

"Holy Shit! Here it comes!"