Hello, fellow members! I hope
you're having a great week.
As you may be aware, with the
transit strike in full swing, we've had to postpone our Craft
and Critique evening until next Thursday, the 31st of May. We
hope you aren't too inconvenienced, and that you will show up
at the Sherbrooke Street West YMCA in renewed numbers to share
our fun evening. (see our Events
page for more complete information).
Our most recent event, the Imagination
Night, held April 19th at the Monkland Grill, was a very good
evening. We had a large turnout and everyone got involved in
the fun.
Imagination Night is an evening where
we take our imaginations out for a much-needed walk. It involves
each person being given a single phrase or sentence to study
then, during the next fifteen minutes or so, they have to let
their imaginations run wild and come up with a short story,
using the given line as the first line of their story. The exercise
of our imaginations gets our individual creative juices flowing
and, when each member reads his or her story at time's end,
we each marvel at the novel ways each person's mind has managed
to insert into their story.
No two stories are alike, and some phrases
get people moving in a hundred different directions... someone
might be on the moon, another in prison, another out running,
another planning a murder. For this night, we not only managed
to stretch our imaginative legs, so to speak, but we got to
see how our imaginations compare to those of others and, perhaps,
how our own thought processes might have benefitted from a different
way of looking at things.
Personally, I was heartened yto see the
quality of the stories that some self-proclaimed non-writers
came up with. As a group, we managed to go from a humerous story
about literal puppy love, to someone double-crossing a double-crosser,
to unrequited love. All from the same line "She hugged
him one last time before she closed the door".
We look forward to our next night together.
Joseph Richard Mannella
Oh, by the way, if you like
Imagination Night, don't be afraid to tell us. Maybe you have
an idea for a startup line, or perhaps a change that might make
it an even more interesting evening. Send your suggestions to:
executive@canadianwriterssociety.com.
April 19th, 2007
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Special thanks to Trudie
Ogden, Adult Program and Membership Director of the YMCA, for
all her help and understanding.
Rosalie
Avigdor
