Writing Exercise IThis scene is from my novel, Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell. The scene includes one of Max Merriwell's writing exercises, an exercise you can try for yourself if you like. I've heard from one writing instructor who is making use of the novel — and the exercises — in her writing class. She says the students are having a great time! Susan sat in a comfortable chair in the ship's library, listening to Max talk about writing. The library was furnished like a gentleman's club with upholstered easy chairs and oak tables. The windows along one wall looked onto the Promenade, where passengers strolled and jogged. The other wall was lined with bookshelves on which Max's work was prominently displayed-books by Max Merriwell, Mary Maxwell, and Weldon Merrimax. Max sat in an upholstered leather chair at one end of a heavy oak table. A dozen or so passengers sat around the table. Alberta was there. So were two little old ladies, one with her knitting and one with her embroidery. A brooding teenage boy with a ragged haircut and rumpled clothes slumped in his chair and glowered out the window at the joggers who passed on the promenade. Susan guessed he was a Weldon Merrimax fan even before she noticed the paperback copy of Tell Me No Lies on the table in front of him. Cindy, a young woman wearing an Hawaiian shirt, turquoise blue trousers, and the blue blazer that served as the uniform of the cruise staff, had introduced Max with an air of breathless enthusiasm.. "I'm so glad you all came to the first ever Odyssey writers' workshop," she said to the group. "I think it's so exciting that we have an internationally known author here to teach us." "I want to introduce Max Merriwell, the author of many, many books." It was clear to Susan that Cindy had not read any of Max's books. The young woman seemed most impressed by the number of books, rather than their content. "We are pleased and honored that he'll be teaching this workshop," she concluded. Max regarded the group benignly. "It's very nice to see you all here today," he said. "You may think that I'm going to teach you to write, but what I'm really going to do is help you exercise your imaginations. I've found that relatively few adults ever exercise their imaginations at all, let alone give them the kind of strenuous workout that writing a story demands." He talked for a while about paying attention to the world around you, about learning to listen to your inner voice, about the power of your imagination. "I assume that each of you is here because you have a story to tell. You may not know what that story is, but if you try, you'll figure it out. Every one of us has many stories that make up our lives. I'm going to help you learn to tell those stories. So let's get started. Everyone needs a pencil and paper." Some people had brought notebooks; others had not. Cindy bustled around, getting everyone what they needed. She was relieved, Susan thought, to have something to do. "First off, I don't want you to confuse me with your high school English teacher. I didn't much like my high school English teachers and I certainly never wanted to be one. I'm not here to correct your grammar and put periods in the right places. I have a healthy respect for a well-placed period, but I don't think the world will end if a period is out of place. I don't even care much about the words. What I care about is the imagination. That's what matters." "Now I want you to think about something that matters to you. An object of some sort that you have strong feelings about. Something you love or something you hate — I don't care which — but something that matters to you. Write down what you are thinking about." In her notebook, Susan scrawled, "My wedding ring." "Write down a couple of lines about that object. Describe it. You don't have to write in sentences. I don't care about that. Just write something." Susan wrote: "Solid gold. Heavy. Valuable." She hesitated for a moment, tapping her pen on the page nervously, then crossed out the word valuable and wrote "Expensive." Not quite the same thing, she thought. It was worth money, but it wasn't valuable to her, or she wouldn't have thrown it away. She caught herself in the act of feeling for the ring with the thumb of her left hand, touching the callus where the ring had once rested. "Familiar," she wrote. "Gone." "Now write a few words about how that object makes you feel," Max said. She stared at the page, her eyes focusing on the last word she had written. "Gone." How did she feel? She remembered staring at the horizon as the ship headed across the ocean, far from land. "Adventurous," she wrote. "Bold." "Don't worry if some of the feelings are contradictory," Max said. "That's just the way it is, sometimes." "Afraid," Susan wrote. "Lost. Confused." "All right," Max said. "Now I want you to put all that together into a scene. A very short scene involving the object you have described. A scene that comes out of your feelings about the object." Susan wrote: "A woman stood on the deck of a ship, staring out at the ocean waves. In her hand, she held a golden ring, her wedding ring. Staring out at the waves, she threw the ring overboard, threw it as hard as she could. At the moment it left her hand, she wished that she could snatch it back. Too late. Her hand was empty; the ring was gone. She felt lost. She felt lonely. She felt like anything could happen."
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