For the most part, unless the instructor is out for some rare reason, we have a creative writing group each and every Tuesday. Shes pretty reliable, only out a few times, and I definitely miss this set aside time when we don’t have it. Its not exactly what you would think of when you think “creative writing group”. Its not about how to write better, more descriptively, or grammar corrections. The instructor really knows her stuff and what she does is gives urging through prompts and then, after a few minutes of wordplay, we read aloud and analyze what we have written. Its almost like art therapy but with writing instead. We work on trying to find out what our writing says about us. Often when we each read aloud the others around the table hear hidden messages and meanings in the words that we never realized were present.

This week she gave us a list of simple questions and we were told to reply to each one with whatever came to our minds when we read the question. What we came up with didn’t necessarily have to be a direct response to the question itself but, at least preferably, a semi-complete thought or part of a sentence that had to do with what we thought about it. After we had written down our answers she then told us to find a blank sheet of paper and write down only what we had written as reply to each question but we were supposed to turn it into a paragraph that had some flow to it. It didn’t have to make complete sense but it couldn’t be totally disjointed. When we read our paragraphs out loud it was supposed to invoke a view into the various ways we looked at life. It was a lot of intrinsic translation that could only be seen through the eyes of a bystander.

The questions:

Why do bunnies have pink noses?

How do birds fly?

What makes the pictures in my TV?

Where does the color ——- come from?

Why do we have two ears?

Where does our thinking go when we sleep?

Why are our teeth white?

What do wild monkeys eat?

Why is the sky blue?

What makes the subway cars go?

Why do we have fingerprints?

How do fish not drown?

How do lightbulbs work?

Why is dirt brown?

How do planes stay in the air?

Why do we have fingernails?

What are dreams?

Why is today Tuesday?

Why is water wet?

What do worms do all day?

How does ice get to be ice?

How does the refrigerator stay cold inside?

How (or why) do trees grow leaves?

…the answers tomorrow.