Writing Exercise, Random Word Gen.

I read a lot about people who claim to have writers block. Personally, I’ve never suffered from it; however I do get easily distracted by various things. When working on my writing and not actually wanting to work on a specific story, I have a trick that I use as a writing exercise. I use a random word generator:

http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomWord/RandomWord.aspx

http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx

To find three words, in my case the words that were generated were: Cow, Nightmare, and Chocolate. Now that I have my three words I write. It doesn’t matter what you come up with just as long as you write. Also you’re not writing to come up with the next block buster, this should be FUN. It can be a five minute free writing exercise or go all night. Just write.

Here is what I came up with:

“I don’t believe this! You piece of junk!” I kicked the side of my Chevy truck with my boot.

“Owwwww, damn it!” I hoped up and down grabbed my purse drawing my teeth down in a clenched position.

“Please oh please work! What?!? No signal?”

With a heavy sigh I pulled the keys from the ignition and turned back down the dusty road I had just been driving down. “Great.”

I figured the distance back to the farm house I had passed to be about three miles, if I was lucky. Instinct took over and I began to walk rubbing my hands up and down my shivering arms.

“Of course this had to happen in Nov-“

A coyote let fly a mournful solo somewhere off in the shrubby distance. His cry began the flood of night time noise that only a prairie can provide. Insects and rattles abounded everywhere driving my senses crazy. I jumped a little more as the minutes and miles began to stack up.

“I’m wild and reckless….”

“Born in Texas, I eat six shooters for my breakfast” It helped to calm the nerves. I gazed out over the prairie stretched out next to me and could just make out the line of an electric fence.

“I shot a wild Indian, and kilt a wild bear...”

My mind finally began to wander about the time my stomach began to growl. I dug in my purse nearly coming to a stop until my fingers met with foil. Ah, comfort food. I pulled out the bar and peeled back the foil breaking off a piece of chocolate before stuffing the candy back into my purse. My feet began along my journey once more as I popped the small piece of chocolate into my mouth savoring the sweetness.

“And I whipped my hinny on a prickly pear woo woo!”

The chocolate and my favorite tune perked me right up as I continued along my way I didn’t even notice the mulling. I can’t be certain how long I walked along that road oblivious to anything. It seemed like forever and not just three miles. Then the mulling became louder. I looked back toward the fence and noticed several cows, mostly white with patches of black begin to drift closer to the fence. I kept walking glad for the company. The dust churned thick in the air from the beating the cattle’s hooves provided. Every few minutes I looked back to the once barren prairie to see several more cows gathering, almost walking with me.

I walked on and still saw no sign of the farm house. The chill crept back over my skin forcing my hands to work my arms yet again. My legs stayed somewhat warm due to the walk, but the more I rubbed my arms the cooler they became. Finally, worried that I might have miss calculated I turned in search of my truck. There behind me were black and white Cows. Thick along the road they obscured my view of anything else behind me.

“What the heck? Where did all of you come from?”

I turned back to the dusty road ahead of me, but could see nothing but black and white. The mulling became a sea of churning cow voices drilling ever closer to me. I began to back toward the fields but there all I met with were hot wire fencing and more cattle. Wide eyed I was ushered back to the middle of the road surrounded on all sides by these cows!

I began to panic remembering stories of cowboys being trampled and worse, but these were cows what could they want? The mulling became pitched droning on. My imagination got the better of me; I could almost swear they were saying, “Chocolate… CHOCOLATE...”

Something pressed against my forehead bringing me jerking upright. I forced my eyes from a sea of black and white to open.

Fiercely I rubbed my face with my hands before shaking my head to look at them.

“Ewwwww!! Chocolate?!?” I looked across my littered desk to find that I had once again fallen asleep at my keyboard.

“What a nightmare!”