Underground Writers Network Forum Challenge of the Week ~ #15

What is timed writing?

Timed writing is the act of sitting down somewhere comfortable, jotting down the time, and then simply writing for a set amount of time, writing anything, without stopping to fix, or edit, or clarify, rephrase, or delete. You let your mind run free of the sometime burden of wanting perfection and give your imagination free reign.

Your challenge:

Read this article by Holly Lisle: Underground Writers Network ~ Timed Writing
, and then do some timed writing for ten minutes. Write about whatever you want (keep it clean, please, because you have to post it here at some stage). Just keep writing and don't stop for anything.

When you're done, read what you've written, and revel in the fact you didn't have to make it perfect. Do that for as long as you'd like. ::cool:: ::biggrin::

Then, go and do something else for a while. Read a book for a bit. Hang the washing out. For goodness' sake, feed your poor, hungry pet!

Later, come back to your piece and read it. See where you might want to change this or that. What would make it read better? If it's a story scene, did it have change, and closure? If you didn't actually finish anything in the ten minutes, that's okay. See what it might take to finish the scene. When you've had a break, come back again, and edit your Timed Writing piece. Polish it and make it look pretty. If you're a super-Timed-Writer-person and you've written a lot in that ten minutes, or if your polishing and editing extended things somewhat, then feel free to only use a portion of it for this challenge.

All we want here is something like 500-1,000 words, but if you come up with less, that's okay to post, and the same if you come up with more, only try to keep your post below 1,000, since this is supposed to be an easy challenge. Any style, either narrative or poetry.

Have fun!

Rather than post this fragment on my profile, I've opted to simply post here. This was actually 10 minutes and 15 seconds.. just had to finish that last line, ya know.
Enjoy.


Thick acrid smoke flooded the cockpit. Arult refastened his oxygen mask and fought the massive cyclic that pulsed and spasmed between his knees. The force of the spin was mind crushing. Arult gasped into the respirator in short controlled puffs, straining to hold onto his consciousness. He lifted his hands from the cyclic to his shoulders, straining against the pull of the spin. He felt the coarse fibers of the nylon ripcords, and pulled with his stomach muscles in a crunch like motion.. Just like he�d learned at the academy.

There was a massive explosion that hurled the terrified pilot into the heavens. He watched as the canopy deployed, then turned his eyes to the swirling form of his 40 million dollar jet as it erupted into a ball of hellfire and white heat. The prevailing winds carried him for miles as he slowly drifted to the growing green mass of a cornfield.

Suddenly a splinter of hell ripped through his left leg, hammering and piercing the limb just below his knee and behind. Arult howled in surprise, then heard the report of a rifle. Panic swept over the helpless pilot yet again. He was a sitting duck, floating at the mercy of the wind, and a perfect target for any one below with a weapon more powerful than his son�s Red Rider BB gun. Frantically he gripped the parachute cords on his left side and began to lift himself carefully into the rigging. He was careful so as not to entangle himself, but tried desperately to collapse the piece of silk that was both his savior and his sentence to death.

The olive bubble collapsed and Arult plummeted quickly about 300 feet. He released the cords and once again slowed to a controlled fall. He then began the process anew. Bullets were now more frequent, but Arult continued his strategy until at last safe on the ground. Safe� what a terribly relative term. Even as he detached his chute, he could hear the gruff voice of a Turk telling him to drop his sidearm in the most horrendously butchered English that Arult had ever heard.

The years of the new crusade had been bloody, to say the least, and Arult had found that his once stoic belief in the war had at first wavered then snuffed in the breeze of his maturing consciousness. Death over what? He didn�t even really believe in god. He just believed in his nation. He felt every inch the fool.

He was marched for several days on his bloody, infection laden leg into the sparse rocky mountains that meandered through Eurasia, offered only the most austere of rations, and nearly enough water to survive before reaching the electrified fences of Abu Hamas Maliki prison camp. The hollow faces and skeletal bodies staring back from behind the deadly links told him more of the story than he wished to see.

�Should have went down with my plane,� he murmured, then stepped through the gates of hell.

Quote:


What a great piece. I think that it speaks volumes socially to our fall from humanity, and return to the animal as both society and family crumble under the shackles selfishness, greed, and an ever growing inability to accept those around us and see them as ourselves. I think that it must have been a very revealing ten minutes for you Kate, and well worth the few moments spent. I would like to see this grow into a more social metaphor than personal. Maybe another ten minutes will find its way into such a turbulent and socially important topic.

Great read, great message.