All right, my dear readers, I am offering you the opportunity to tell me what to do! But before I let you do that, I am dutifully checking in with my LIterate Kitten-inspired writing accountability report for the week. Let’s see, getting this one out of the way as soon as possible: DID NOT work on my novel. However, I did accomplish a few other writing-related tasks.

  • I wrote something for my blog every day.
  • I finished reading Three Cups of Tea, and began A Free Life by Ha Jin. Also began reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth. The first story in the collection brought me to tears, and I will have to write more about this book after I’ve finished reading it.
  • Did several writing exercises.
  • Met with a couple of my writer friends to chat over coffee and share our writing exercises.
  • Thought about snakes, became obsessed with reading about snake symbology, working on a piece about my snake experiences.

So, not too bad, all in all. And now, here’s your chance. Below, I’ve posted four story beginnings that I wrote the other day in response to this exercise:

Today’s exercise is this: in five minutes, write as many beginnings as you can that have to do with food. Write one, two, eleven, whatever you can do. Again, by a “beginning” I mean anything from a sentence fragment to three full sentences, but no more than that per beginning.

For our next meeting, my writer friends and I are going to finish something we’ve started.  I figure, why not just finish one of the stories that I wrote beginning lines for.  And why not let you all vote on which one I should finish?  So, below are my four beginnings.  Leave a comment saying which one you’d like me to develop into a story, and the one that gets the most votes wins!  After I finish the story, I’ll post it on my blog, no matter how bad it is! Yes, I am offering to share my bad writing with you!

Okay, here are the choices:

1. Even with the Feds hot on his tail, Antonio always made it a point to stop in at Maude’s for a slice of cherry pie.

2. Why Ricky decided we needed to hunt and eat a squirrel, I’ll never know. But that was when all the trouble started.

3. How many love affairs have begun with strawberries and champagne, and ended with tuna scraped out of a can, while standing over the kitchen sink?

4. Some moms are all love and chocolate cake and warm noodle casseroles. Mine was more half-rotten apples and stale saltine crackers.