I had another meeting of the writing group today. We were up at the Waterloo Chapters, which proved to be a suitable venue. We found ourselves a table, despite a surprising number of customers attending on a Monday. Four of us showed up; I read a portion of chapter four of The Young City to a good response, and I listened to some excellent material from Heather Smith. I predict she’ll become Canada’s Roddy Doyle.
Anyway, we started things off with another writing exercise. I supplied the first line: “I feel most like __ when…” with a Greek god used to supply the blank. This is what I wrote:
I feel most like Zeus when I hold an icicle. The long lightning bolt of water I break off the eavestrough at the end of my garage. The two-foot stalk feels lethal in my hand; I could end civilizations with my downstroke. The surface gleams with the light of the setting sun, cold where it should be hot.
Raising my arm, I strike. The icicle melts to shards on my driveway. Asphalt outlasts all civilizations.
I feel most like Poseidon when I drink. I suck seas with every gulp. Feel the hull of ships on my pallate. Swallow ocean liners. Sink the Titanic again and again. Take that, Leonardo DiCaprio!
I feel most like Jupiter when I weigh myself. Enough said.
I wish I was a Fate, knitting in my bower the future of the world. I wish I could knit. What is a skipped stitch in time? Is it a hole that swallows UFOs, or is it where geniuses and ideas come from? I think it is the latter. They distort the fabric as I weave. I have no idea where they are going.
On the Trenchcoat Farewell Project front, The Sea of Doubt has been fully laid out, as has Twilight’s Last Gleaming, which basically finishes Trenchcoat 4. I should be well into Ninth Aspect by the end of this week.