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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

One Line Wednesdays, The Modified Version



If I knew the best way to extract oil from an African Locust bean, how to seal off brass andirons, or happened to have any homemade Gothic furniture laying about, I'd be, quite literally, in business.

Don’t you just want to read on? Aren’t you wondering what kind of business would demand such knowledge? More pressingly, why would a freelance-writing art teacher lament the lack of such a diverse skill set? And what is an African Locust bean, anyway?

If this were a typical post, I’d have to give a blow by blow of how these gaps in my general knowledge have become an economic obstacle. A normal post would, likewise, require an detailing of my encounter with the African Locust bean. Most tediously, an ordinary post would call upon me to weave the entire assemblage together into some sort of witty observation about life, business, or Gothic styling.

But not today. Not on One Line Wednesday. No, on One Line Wednesday, vagueness, brevity, and misdirection are the order of the day--at least for a few hours. One Line Wednesday is still a simple celebration of the single good line, but my readers--read my husband and Jen--demanded a change in format wherein I return at the end of the day and explain the origin of my line. My husband claims I'm robbing my readers of the opportunity to see how I take something mundane and make it sound epic, which he claims is one of my mad skills, but the bottom line is that he can't handle the curiosity. Jen says the whole thing would serve as a sort of writer's workshop for her.

So I will post a simple explanation of the events inspiring my line this evening.

If you're new to One Line Wednesday, here’s the lowdown: Each week, I’ll get things started with the single best line I’ve managed to craft in the intervening seven days. Each week there’ll also be one of those cool Mr. Linky widgits that you see below (just click it, It works. Really). That’s where you leave a link to your one line post. Even though I'm now required to explain my line, you need not feel any pressure of further explanation. There's no need to worry if your words are “going anywhere.” No of the tricky transitions or epic endings one might expect in traditional prose. Your line can be about anything, as clear or cryptic as you’d like, and who knows—maybe even be true!

If you have no blog, feel free to participate by just commenting as you would for a normal post. If you do have a blog, however, please mention that you are participating in One Line Wednesday, and add a hyperlink to this post. Feel free, also, to copy the official One Line Wednesday image at the opening of this post to illustrate yours, but that’s optional.

But don’t forget the most important thing—have a little low stress fun with the written word. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

3 comments:

Kathleen said...

This is probably the most interesting--and challenging--meme out there. I vow to participate one day. I just have to do something about my creative juices, which just haven't been flowing right lately. I have a week to ponder this until your next one...

Grace W. said...

Thanks Cynthia! But my goodness, I don't see the sun until the weekends now. Congratulations to you as well on your new position. I read the crazy day you had leading up to your interview. Murphy's law never fails sadly.

ballast photography said...

Kathleen--just because you said that, I will try this next week, one more time...but I'm thinking One Line Wednesdays might not get a contract renewal for November programming here at Running With Letters...

And Hi, Grace--thanks for stopping by :)

And for anyone who might be following today: My line was inspired by what has so far proven a disappointing journalism gig. I'll be posting about it tomorrow, but for now I'll just say that the three ambiguous phrases I included in my line are titles of available stories--with absolutely no further information provided. just one long list of "titles" I can "claim," attempt to write, and get paint a modest fee if I happen to get it right.

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