First Lines and Writing Prompts

Yesterday's exercise with first lines went really well.  I had an 11 page handout, which I put in a folder.  Each page had a first line (s) or first sentence(s).  We pulled them out a page at a time.  We wrote for 5 minutes, and then we pulled the next sheet out of the folder.  At the end of class, I had them choose the one they liked best, the one we would work on next week.  Some of them wanted to include more than one, and I said yes.

Next week, I'll give them a folder of first pages, and we'll add to each other's writing.  I'll report back about how it goes. 

My students stayed with the process for the whole class period.  That shouldn't surprise me, but it's the end of the semester, and I wouldn't have been offended if our capacity for trying something new has vanished.  Happily, they wrote and wrote, and after class was over, 2 of the 6 students stayed behind to tell me how valuable the process was.

I did it too.  I wondered if my knowledge of the larger works would influence my writing, and I'd say, overall, no--but here and there, yes.

Here are the first lines, in case you want to try it too.  After the lines, I'll post the sources.  I also think they make an interesting poem, when read together.

---

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me.


Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.


I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story.

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.


Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.


I was getting along just fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy, and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came home again.


This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch’s cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar. God rewards.



First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.



It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.



In a hole in the ground there lived a ___________. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down or eat: it was a _______-hole, and that means comfort.



“Where’s Papa going with that axe?”

---

Here are the sources (and you'll see above, I took the word "hobbit" out, and only one student recognized the source):

  

Page # of handout	Author	Source
1	Daphne du Maurier	Rebecca (novel)
2	W. S. Merwin	“Separation” (poem)
3	James Baldwin	“Sonny’s Blues” (short story
4	Gwendolyn Brooks	“The Bean Eaters” (poem)
5	Virginia Woolf	Mrs. Dalloway (novel)
6	Eudora Welty	“Why I Live at the P.O.” (short story)
7	Louise Gluck	“Gretel in Darkness” (poem)
8	Tim O’Brien	“The Things They Carried” (short story)
9	Madeleine L’Engle	A Wrinkle in Time (novel)
10	J. R. R. Tolkien	The Hobbit (novel)
11	E. B. White	Charlotte’s Web (novel)

 

Opening Lines, Search Committees, Free Cats, and Spies

It's been a strange week, a bit tiring, even with less commuting back and forth between Spartanburg and Arden.  We have movers coming today in Arden to take the big items that need a moving van down to the S'burg house, so last night, we got those items ready (taking stuff out of drawers, mostly).  So no wonder it feels like it should be a Friday.  Let me record some fragments before they slip away.

--I've had several hours of extra faculty work this week; I'm on a search committee for a new Speech faculty member, a tenure track position, and it's not the only tenure track line Spartanburg Methodist College is filling.  Around the nation, schools are contracting, and I am so grateful to be part of one that is expanding or holding steady in terms of enrollment.

--I've been working on an assignment for the last few class meetings with my Creative Writing class.  Today I'll give them a variety of first lines and sentences from published works, like Rebecca, Mrs. Dalloway, and "Sonny's Blues."  Students will write a chunk today to go with the opening lines/sentences; they'll have 6 minutes with each one, and they'll have 11 in total.  On Tuesday, they'll add to the work of classmates, which I think I'll have them do by cutting and pasting and writing.

We're running out of time; if we had more, I might have them do an exquisite corpse kind of experiment, adding without seeing what had gone before.   But as it is, I think I'll have each student choose the top 3, and on Tuesday we'll add, and a week from today, we'll read and reflect on what we learned from this strange collaboration.

We might also talk about the elements of fiction/narrative and how they decided to move forward; was plot more important than character, for example.  I also want to remember how this experiment could be used to talk in more detail about the importance of a good beginning.   I've been paging through literature anthologies, surprised by how few compelling first sentences are in there.

--If/when I teach nonfiction writing or journalism classes again, I wonder if it would be useful and/or interesting to have students read and/or listen to the same expert interviewed by different people.  I've been listening to a Fresh Air interview with Jill Lepore and next I'll listen to the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast interview with her.

--On Tuesday, I did quilting the way I once did, with a plastic cutting board under the part I was hand quilting--much easier than quilting across a big table.  Quilting across a big table is a much easier way to get the middle part quilted.

--I've taken several walks around the neighborhood of the fixer-upper house in Spartanburg.  On Wednesday, a man sitting on his back stoop asked if I wanted a cat.  I said no thank you and kept moving.  I thought about all the offers I've gotten through the years of exercising outside, mostly offers of sex and drugs.  And now I'm in the free cat part of my life.

--When I remember Fall 2026, I want to remember that big money didn't always win--it was true in many political races and true in baseball.

--The week's news has been full of Nvidia's leader, Jensen Huang's affair with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese spy.  Really?  REALLY??? He fell for one of the oldest tricks in the competition sourcebooks.  Humans can be such idiots.

I loved this beginning to David Ignatius' recent opinion piece in The Washington Post:  "Keith Riggin, a former CIA station chief in Beijing who later advised U.S. companies on the Chinese intelligence threat, says he gave American executives a simple warning about beautiful women who might approach them in Beijing: 'You don’t get any better-looking when you go to a place like China.'”

Veterans Day 2026

Today is Veterans Day, a day to celebrate everyone who has served in the military, unlike Memorial Day, when we remember those who lost their lives during military service.  Here is a picture of my favorite veteran, my dad:

He's my favorite veteran for obvious reasons, but there are many other veterans who would also be favorites:  my father-in-law, an Army veteran, and my Florida pastor Keith Spencer and his wife, Piper Spencer, Navy veterans, for example.  I think of one of my best friends from high school, Chum Kimsey:

The above picture is from 2014, when she had just been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which would take her life.  She served in the Army in the late 80's and early 90's.

Every so often, I hear people talk about how young people should be required to do military service.  I remember all the wars which wrecked so many lives, and I don't think military service requirement is the answer to whatever problems we see in "the youth today."  Spend a summer working in a VA hospital and then come tell me how military service would be a solution--and how we would afford to take care of even more injured veterans.

On November 11, I'm also thinking of Armistice Day, the end to World War I.  I think it's hard for most of us to conceive of how many people died in World War I. Even when I have my students imagine all of their male classmates going off to fight and no one coming back, I think it's hard to get our heads around the total. I wish we could all go to the WWI cemeteries in France. It's a visual that's tough to capture in a picture; it does make a very different impact.

And here's the even more sobering statistic:  look up how many people died in World War II.  It's staggering, the kind of numbers that make me say, "Were there even that many people alive at that time?"  Yes, there were that many people alive--and at the end of 4 years, they were dead.

Here's a picture of my dad, my sister, and me at the WWII Memorial during an Honor Flight event.

It was both a joyful trip and a somber one, being surrounded by living veterans, all older than 65, and the monuments to the wars that they fought.  It was a sobering reminder of the ultimate cost that so many veterans pay/paid.

I am also thinking of all the quilters I know who make quilts for veterans as a way to say thank you:

I'm not at a point yet where I could do that--but this morning, I'm wishing that I could show gratitude in this way, a way that results in a beautiful quilt.  For this morning, though, words will have to do.

Waking Up Alone in the Fixer-Upper (but All Is Well)

I have spent the first night by myself in the fixer-upper house in Spartanburg.  We've spent one night here before, which I wrote about in this blog post.   But last night it made more sense for me to be here and my spouse in Arden.

I'm happy to report that all went well.  When I was younger, in my late teens and 20's, I was much more afraid to be the only one sleeping in a house.  It's not that I was sleeping in unsafe places--no, they were perfectly nice houses in the suburbs, with several locks on every door.

I was not afraid sleeping in the open, as part of a backpacking trip.  Of course, I never backpacked by myself.

Yesterday was a long, long work day--nothing bad, but lots of responsibilities in one day.  I didn't have a chance to do grocery shopping, so this morning, I wondered if there were any bakeries nearby.  Lo and behold, I found the Little River Brewing Company just a few miles away.  It's a coffee roaster, a cafe, and an outdoor dining/concert space--I went to the Fretwell Street location.

I bought a health nut cookie, a pumpkin scone, and a molasses cookie, and I think the health nut cookie was my favorite.  It had pumpkin seeds and nuts and dried fruit held together with gluten free flour.  It didn't taste fatty, although it wasn't dry.  It also wasn't sweet.

I am planning to go for a walk at 10 this morning--I can still do that and be to work by 11:45.  What a revelation.  I've done some poetry packet submitting.  I want to make sure the closet is cleanish/dust free before moving the clothes I brought with me.

It's strange to look out the windows and see so many bare branches on the trees.  Autumn is zooming by.  We have a truck coming on Thursday to move the bigger items to our S'burg house.  Two weeks from now, we have the last day of classes; when we come back from Thanksgiving, we have a reading day and go right into exams.

My spouse should be here soon, so let me go and make the house look less like a hurricane swept through.

Amish Quilters and Mistakes Made with Abandon

Some people see me as a talented quilter, but I realize all of my shortcomings:  I'm not precise in terms of cutting or stitching.  I've figured out projects that work for me.  I want to stitch so that I have something to do during times of TV watching, so sewing on the machine won't work.  I don't like hand quilting as much on big projects, but modern batting doesn't need extensive quilting to keep it in place, so I quilt less.  Some people pay for long arm quilters to finish their projects, but so far, I haven't.

Quilt Camp always reminds me of how many ways we can create fabric arts.  I'm also reminded of how often quilting finds its way into my poems.

Ten years ago, four years before I went to my first Quilt Camp, I wrote a poem with some of these ideas, a poem which was also a response to a poem by Luisa Igloria.  It appeared in a post on Dave Bonta's Via Negativa site. 

One Intentional Mistake

                    “how for years I was taught:
                    fly low under the radar.”
                    “Only” by Luisa Igloria



Amish quilters made intentional mistakes
because only God can craft
items of perfection.

I make mistakes without precision,
scattering them across my work
with great abandon, as if to ward
off evil spirits.

Those spirits will move
on to haunt those who are too proud
of their precise stitches, their perfect
children, their houses ready to grace
the cover of glossy magazines.

I fly under the radar
of every evil spirit with my chaotic
collection of art supplies spread
out across every surface, children frolicking
in paint or mud.

But my children get their nightly baths
before being tucked into beds with bright
quilts with crooked seams. I will tell
them one last story
about the woman who abandoned
the neatness of numbered columns
for the spatter of paint and the magic
of fairy cakes in the overgrown garden.

Fall Quilt Camp 2026

I haven't meant to be silent here on the blog; I even took my laptop to Quilt Camp yesterday, but I was so focused on my projects that I barely used it at all.  By late morning on Saturday, I had finally put together the top for the Christmas quilt I'm making for my cousin's oldest child who is graduating from high school in the spring, the one who loves all things Christmas.

On Friday, I finished the quilt for the king size bed.  It was mostly done, but I needed to close up all the edges.

I love that the quilt has so many scraps from fellow quilters, and a bit from some of my grandmother's fabric that was left when she made clothes for me.  When I presented it at Show and Tell, I thought people might tell me scraps they recognized, but they did not.

I opened the Faith Center every morning and led a small group on a walk each afternoon.  Along with all the sewing I get done, I love the chance to reconnect with friends.

We had perfect autumnal days, after the heavy rains passed through on Wednesday.  I am keenly aware of the fact that we won't have this weather and autumnal views much longer, so I pushed myself to get out and walk.

I don't have a picture of one of the most fun parts of this year's Quilt Camp.  One of the retreatants has a small general store, and she brought mystery bundles, 2 pounds of scraps (mainly long lengths) of quality fabric, fabric pre-packaged from a distant manufacturer.  After evening show and tell on Thursday, the quilter next to me bought one, and we watched her unpack it.  The quality and variety and amount impressed us,--all that fabric for $15!  The surrounding quilters each bought one, including me.  We took turns unpacking each bundle, with many oohs and ahs, and then we spent time trading.  I was late to bed that night.

Quilt Camp as Metaphor for Political Hope

I ran out of time yesterday, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that time got away from me.  I planned to write more about the election, of course.  I planned to write about my online classes; the curriculum/tech/assessment experts revamped the class, and there have been surprises, like the video students posted instead of a written discussion post, which worked surprisingly well, except for how much longer it took me to grade them.

What I posted just after midnight as election day passed into the day after election day is still true--how profoundly moving to see so many women elected.  I am also surprised by how many mainline Protestant pastors and seminarians were elected; James Talarico got the most coverage, but James Hamilton, perhaps, has the most experience and influence in a religious sphere of everyone elected.

I have been watching coverage and postings, and I'm struck by what people want and hope for after these elections.  My want/hope is simple:  pass some legislation that can help some people.  I don't care about Epstein files or corruption investigations--go back to that housing bill that had bipartisan support and might be veto-proof in the new Congress.  I don't care about taxing billionaires--bring back the health care subsidies that helped people afford health insurance.  I don't care about impeachment--restore that expansion of the earned income tax credit that happened in the wake of the pandemic, the expansion that showed remarkable impact on alleviating child poverty during the brief time it was in effect.

I say that I don't care about ___________ -- I do care, but I don't think it's a good use of time and energy.  

Let's do some things that most of us can agree on, some legislation that will make life better for people who won't see those things happen without some federal money.  Legislation with money delivers power that individuals and groups can't do on their own.  My small country church agrees with my desire for more housing, especially for poor people.  We don't have the resources to build one house, let alone an apartment complex.  But legislation done well could attract development.

I will spend the rest of the week at Quilt Camp, which seems like a great metaphor for what the country needs.  We are women of varying beliefs, but we find our common ground when we come together.  We are women of varying skills, but we're all creating works of beauty.