Red Jello

AAaaaagh! I just realized it's after 11pm and I have not blogged. It's not that I haven't written, I feel like I've been writing all day. I am so loving my writing course. A lot of it is writing personal vignettes and essays - often I take an old blog entry and turn it into a bigger story.

So thank God for the blog - it's giving me a leg up on the other students. And thank God the students hail from around the world and I'll never meet any of them, so I can't be called out on the real facts.

Today our task was to choose a setting that has personal meaning from a given list and really bring the surroundings into focus before launching into our story. 

"Red Jello. Jello needs time to set before we can eat it otherwise it ends up a liquid mess of ruby rain dribbling down our chins. While our stories don't "set" like Jello per say, they do need a solid setting to orient us, to lay the foundation for the rest of the writing so we can eat it up in an easy, satisfying manner."

Here's the list:

Wedding Reception
Public Bathroom
Birthday Party
Funeral
Police Station
Waiting Room
School Cafeteria
Happy Hour
Graduation
Elegant Restaurant
Grocery Store
Bowling Alley
Concert
Park
Hospital Room
Playground
Parent's House
Baptism
Baby Shower
Airport Terminal
Bookstore
Backyard
Drugstore
Picnic
Dinner Party
Museum
Ice Rink

I could so make a fabulous story out of a public bathroom. I'm familiar with hospital rooms. I've certainly attended my share of baby showers. The grocery store - oh, don't get me started. But alas, I have chosen funeral. Ugggh. What was I thinking. Sarcasm and humour have no place in a funeral home, so this is a writing exercise that has me stretched waaaaay outta my comfort zone. But sadly, into a place of familiarity.

I'm writing and writing but not sure of my direction so I'm having a hard time closing. And assignments are limited to 1200 words. I think I'll just leave it for a few days and come back to it. I have until Monday to pull it into a complete package.