Retreat 1

Last weekend I went on a writer's retreat with 3 other guys with the idea that we'd lock ourselves in a cabin for three days and come out the other side with a book written. I consider the venture successful!
Additionally, we did a writing exercise each morning to warm up our brains. James Ninness is being super cool by posting all the results on his blog, and you should go check out what he and Joe Pezzula and Marcel Losada came up with. I'll be posting what I wrote here.

For the first day, we each wrote down four words on slips of paper and placed them in a bag. Then we each drew a word (it couldn't be one we wrote down) and had to write a piece of flash fiction about the word or using the word as inspiration. Flash fiction is essentially a lightning bolt of creative writing composed of exactly 55 words, no more or less. The word I drew was "Snowman".

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Snowman

It's like waiting for the firing squad to kill you. Dawn breaks over the mountains, and the slow crawl towards death begins. It's not quite murder, nor justice, nor even suicide. Just accepting inevitability; thin stick arms stretched wide for an embrace and a sad charcoal smile for a greeting. It is a good death.