Apology and Input

Clearly I have failed at the Photography Challenge. It's not my fault! I went back East to visit my family for Thanksgiving and I just was too busy being with family to photograph. And the days just slipped by and suddenly I was a week behind! I am going to try to get all the photos taken this week, but if not, it'll be the weekend, which will be past the 30 days of the challenge, but with working during the daylight hours (<shakes fist at Daylight Savings and the season>), it's hard to get any good photos taken right now! Excuses, excuses, I know. I apologize. I do like the challenge, though, and I would like to try to complete it. Don't hold my laziness against me this time.

In other news, I'm four weeks into my creative writing class. It's going well, and I'm enjoying it. Last week's lesson and assignment related to fiction -- which should have made the homework a breeze, right? Except I couldn't get inspired. The prompt just didn't do much for me. I threw something together I'm sure the instructor will poo-poo, but I'm over-inspired by this week's assignment, so hopefully that will make up for it. If I can only narrow my focus. (Always an issue here...)

This week's subject is non-fiction. And the assignment is just broad enough and specific enough to open up a hundred little doors of options. Here it is:

Think of a point in time when you were personally affected by a newsworthy event—historical, cultural, meteorological. For example: watching a disaster on TV, hearing a friend is going off to war, attending a Rolling Stones concert, standing in line with your kid at midnight to buy the latest Harry Potter book, riding out a tornado. (Since it’s been so widely written about, try to find something other than 9/11, but if that’s what’s calling to you, use it.)

Use an exact moment in time as your focal point. Take a mental photograph of that moment. Where are you? How do you look? What are you doing? Who are you with?

Now, write a very short memoir that brings that “photograph” to life. Show what is happening physically and also reveal what’s going on inside your mind. Stay focused on your selected moment, though you may include information that relates to before and after it. This will be written in the first person. If others are present, you’ll probably want to recreate some of the dialogue.

Try to capture this “photograph” in no more than 500 words. Remember, this is nothing more than a draft of a rough idea, something you may wish to pursue further, or not. 

My mind is already racing around trying to land on a really "good" moment. So, I'm curious. What would you write about? So many directions, right? How to narrow?!

In case you were wondering, by the way, my "hate" assignment from a few weeks ago was a success. I wrote about asparagus and it was the first assignment about which my instructor only had good things to say. Yay!