Slice of Life 2018: 14 of 31

For the month of March, I am participating in the Eleventh Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge. That means that I am writing every day for the month of March in the good company of the Two Writing Teachers community. 

Over the weekend, I joined up with other writers for a Vermont writing retreat. We did a couple of prompts, and one that Beth introduced, had to do with finding poems out of single words. She was inspired by Lemonade: and Other Poems by Rob Raczka. 

Here's how it works:

We each chose a word--preferably a long one or a compound one with plenty of letters for playing. Then we passed our word to the person sitting on our left. That person had to make as many words out of the original one and then create a poem with those words. 

Beth handed me jigsaw puzzles on a scrap of paper. (I had spent more time than I meant to working on the Vermont house puzzle.)

I discovered as I wrote word after word-- zip, zap, jizz, jazz, guzzle, gizzle--how much I like the letter z. 

(For those of you who have been reading my posts over the last few days, how funny is that? My theme around endings continues...)

We also had a fun conversation after the exercise about the power of repetition and of nonsense words, both in poems and in stories. It's a fun exercise, and I recommend it!

Here's my poem--made from words only found in jigsaw puzzles:

I jig, jag, jug,

Wag, slag, zag.

I zip and zap,

Wazz and Jazz,

Pizzle, pazzle, puzzle. 

Please don't ask me what it means, but this exercise did give me an appreciation for nonsense words that I may have to revisit in other writing projects. Give it a try! 

Happy Slicing,