Short And Shorter

Todays first 5 minute exercise was to write about a chosen postcard. Dont have the picture here but ...

The shadowed veil weighed heavy, pushing through the layers of my mind. A fleeting ghost, shimmering with density of rock but gossamer to the touch. Deeper and deeper it sank and its ripples arced out leaving traces in every nook and cranny. Everwhere I searched, everywhere I looked it was there and gone. The smell leaked into my consciousness.

Something I releant was that i need not to hear people talking when I write! The theme today was adaptation so the next excercise was after counting the number of words above ( 60 ) to write the same piece but with half the number of words :

The shadowed veil weighed heavy. A fleeting shimmer,dense as rock but gossamer to the touch. Deeper it sank, rippling out. I searched, it was gone. The smell remained.

After this Sue asked us to find the adjectives in our piece ( describing word ) and remove all but one. With Sues help, !, I found my two and removed fleeting. My resoning behind this was that it was superflous. A shimmer is generally fleeting. I kept shadowed as this emphasised the hiden nature of veil. The piece was about a child that has died whether by accident of suicide. The narrator is trying to keep an image of them but this is slipping away. All that remains is the haunting meloncoly of the childs scent.

Sue asked whether i would expand this piece. I said i would - into a multi-media work with overlaid images and sounds : a childs laugh, 'asleep' refrain by The Smiths.