Writing Exercise Part I
At my Tuesday writers’ group in the Mission, we always start the workshop off with an exercise. Last time was my turn to facilitate, so I decided on an exercise where each of the members in attendance would provide one element to use for the beginning of a story. Those elements included:
a setting, an object, a profession, an animal, and a mythical creature.
For this exercise, those elements turned out to be:
a hair salon, a sousaphone, a nurse, a gerbil, and a leprechaun.
Below is what I came up with:
One day at the hair salon, I’m giving a simple cut and wash to my third Thursday three o’clock, when in walks a leprechaun with a sousaphone.
“Mind if I play?” says the leprechaun.
I look at the leprechaun, all three feet of him, staring up at me over the lip of the tuba, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a bad idea to say “no.”
“Sure, whatever,” I say, figuring it’s better to be safe than sorry.
The woman in the chair, my third Thursday three o’clock, looks at me in the mirror and says, “That’s strange.”
I figure she’s talking about the leprechaun, who’s standing by the hair driers playing the opening notes of “The Girl From Ipanema,” when in walks a nurse with a gerbil on a leash.
And I’m thinking that this looks like trouble.