Unforgettable Food

Today's exercise is from Room to Write by Bonni Goldberg.

"In a novel like Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate or the biblical narrative of the Last Supper, food is symbolic, metaphorical. Even in daily life, foods are symbols for us.

Pheasant under glass surrounded by wild raspberries is what I imagine chivalry in King Arthur's court tasted like. Champagne and caviar mean wealth and celebration. Spam is a symbol of hardworking, minimum-wage-earning Americans.

Each of us has personal associations with certain foods as well. You get teary remembering grandfather's buckwheat pancakes. You feel disappointed anticipating Aunt Gretchen's dried-out turkey. You can't stand Jell-O after getting it in the hospital every day for two weeks. Food nourishes more than our physical bodies. It feeds our senses, memories, imaginations and souls.

Today, write about food as a symbol. Your characters may share a meal in which food impacts the action or heightens their relationship. or, list foods that are symbolic for you. Then, choose one and fill the page with your memories and associations."

Go ahead, give it a try! Happy writing!

It's been a while, how about an exercise or two?

From "MFA Insider" in Writer's Digest March/April 2009 issue.

These are said to have been sent from THE writing teacher John Gardner, to one of his students-turned-professor, Charles Johnson. I'm going to try them out myself, but they are TOUGH!

"1. Write three effective long sentences: each at least one full typed page (or 250 words), each involving a different emotion (for example, anger, pensiveness, sorrow, joy). Purpose: control of tone in a complex sentence.

2. Describe a character in a brief passage (one or two pages) using mostly long vowels and soft consonants (o as in "moan," e as in "see"; l, m, n, sh, etc.); then describe the same character, using mostly short vowels and hard consonants (i as in "Sit"; k, t, p, gg, etc.). The prupose of this exercise, Gardner wrote, is to helps students see that 'describing a scene in mostly long vowels and soft consonants achieves and effect far different from that achrieved by a passage mostly in short vowels and hard consonants.'

3. Write a monologue of at least three pages, in which the interruptions 00 pauses, gestures, descriptions, etc-- all clearly and persuasively characterize, and the shifts from monologue to gesture and touches of setting (as when the character touches some object or glances out of the window) all feel rhythmically right. Purpose: to learn ways of letting a character make a long speech that doesn't seem boring or artificial."