Hadn't tried this one before

Here's an interesting writing excersise: Open a book, any book, and find a random passage. Then use that passage as inspiration for a few paragraphs.

I opened Cyrano De Bergarac by Edmond Rostand. I chose it precisely because I had never read it and have no idea what it is about.

The drums are beating, and the regiment arms for the march.
Secretly, I remain here in the convent. I have disobeyed
I shall be with you soon. I send this first by an old monk
As simple as sheep. Who understands nothing of this.
Your smile is more than I can bear, and seek no more.
Be alone tonight, waiting for one who dares.
To hope you will forgive.

The resulting paragraph:

I should like to think that guilt sounds like a beating drum. Infact, I don’t just like to think this, I know this because as I stand here, my heart feels like someone is beating a club against my chest. The man holds up a bible and I am told to swear by it. The man reminds me of a sheep. He is wearing an ugly wool coat and he follows the ugly bailiff as if drawn to him like magnet to metal. I try not to think of the letter remaining under my rucksack as I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God, and I mean that part.

So help me God, that maybe by some miracle, the letter was burned. So help me God, my perspiration be attributed to the heat and not to the lie kept so vulnerably at the forefront of my brain. Thy will be done, if only Jemeny comes back to me. On earth as it is in heaven, where my poor and foolish father no doubt looks down on me shaking his head.

Curse my father! I almost shout as the judge hits his gavel to the wood. If only by faith able to move mountains, I could move the swinging pendulum of the clock, and go back and kill my father before he muttered those fateful words that changed everything: “Esau have I hated!”


Interesting results. Like I said, the random passage is meant purely to inspire words to come to you. It is not meant to necessarily make a story right away. Nothing can do that. Except for pure, unadulterated magic.

Check back for the next blog...I had an inspired idea about pink flamingos as I was about to go to bed last night. Haven't written comedy in awhile. Excited.