Welcome to Second Ferment! Wine pairs well with life ... and food, travel, people, work and play. Grab a glass and join me as I explore the wine scene in Ottawa, Canada, and beyond. Love hearing from my readers, so please leave a comment. Cheers! - Bethany

Friday, May 23, 2008

I wryte gud

I just finished a two-day writing course called "A+ Writing: Beyond the Simple Sentence". It never ceases to amaze me, the things I learn in these classes. Like how "decimate" actually only means to "reduce by ten", and "continually" and "continuously" are not interchangeable. (I also heard someone say they'd never heard of the word "din", which I found hard to believe ... maybe that's cuz I'm a total word geek.)

Anyway, there was one main assignment that we were required to write over the course of the two days, a piece entitled "Where I Sit", which was supposed to be a physical description of your workspace that conveys your personality. This is what I wrote:

Half-rolled tubes of paint lie scattered around the easel. A forgotten brush is stiffened with acrylic, its bristles sticking out at incongruent angles. My pencil case is filled to bursting with the nuts and bolts of art: aquarelles, sketching charcoal, erasers and fine-tipped markers. A pair of scissors rests atop a teetering stack of magazines and slick newspaper inserts. The water can is empty; no matter, I’ll top it up later. What matters is the blank canvas staring back at me—begging for brushstrokes, colour and images—that I have no idea how to fill.

I look over the collection of my daughter’s drawings tacked on the wall. Crayon, finger paint and marker, all wildly scrawled on the backs of recycled computer printouts and enormous sheets of newsprint. Who knows what she’s trying to convey, if anything. I find myself inspired, but also intimidated, by the abstract subject matter of these masterpieces; what comes so easily to a child of two seems impossible for me to grasp.


I don't mean to brag, but when the instructor posted it on the overhead, she said it was written with "flawless grammar". I blushed and felt awkward, but deep down inside, that meant a lot to me.

Now let's go back to our house ... thingy ... where our beds and TV ... is ...

(Melanie would throttle me for that unnecessarily rampant abuse of ellipsis. Ellipsye? Whatever.)

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