Writing Exercise: Forced Associations

In hopes of jump starting my early morning brain (it’s 11:02 AM right now), this is my first step toward a daily habit of “preliminary mental exercises” intended to get my mind in the game and increase productivity at work, life and all therein.

I’ve decided to complete at least one mental exercise a day, as warm up to the heavy mental lifting that often follows during the actual workday. Below is a creative writing exercise picked up among a long list of exercises at Fictionwriting.about.com. This exercise forces creativity by requiring the author to make associations between seemingly unrelated words, chosen randomly from a dictionary. Here we go…

spoony: foolish sentimentality in love.

vituperate: to overwhelm with wordy abuse, to find fault with.

sapid: agreeable to one’s mind, to one’s liking.

(all these have the makings of a love story.)

Among her observable features there was nothing I first appreciated; no impression that lingered beyond a glance or quality that pulled her from a crowd. Yet it was just this, her lack of impact, that stirred my curiosity, and eventually my attraction.

“Why!? Why!?” I asked myself. There were hundreds of boring girls I’ve never had to ignore, yet this one took all my effort to remain unnoticed. It was neither her face nor her figure, or even the sound of her voice, although I would come to love all these qualities later. But it was the undefined, a general sapid quality that followed her and filled the air in which she stood.

My attraction grew so dense and unmanageable that I soon felt threatened by her. And our personal interactions had now been reduced to a series of awkward and minimal exchanges, induced mostly by cordiality. It’s embarrassing to recall, but at both home and work, no matter how my thoughts began they always ended with some spoony day dream.

Within a month from when I started to ignore her, my attraction was in striking bloom. And I was not only mindful of her unobservable features, but had grown to be fully aware of all those qualities that stun a man’s mind when he’s in love. It was around this time that I arose early on a Thursday morning, more absorbed in my infatuation than ever and anxious to see her. Thursdays were particularly important.

I jumped off the bus and hurried to the bagel shop, running just a few minutes late because of some unworkable hair gel, or hair. There she was, scurrying across the street with thoughts surely set on her Thursday regular, a warm cup of coffee and blueberry muffin. About 20 feet ahead of me she neared the bagel shop and stretched out her long, slender hand to open the door when… WAM! A large, burly man with the same speed, twice the weight, and half the awareness suddenly slammed into her. She toppled over without so much as a stumble, and the man’s face was instantly struck with startling concern.

It was when he gave his hand to apologize and help her that I witnessed the most shocking transformation of a human being as I had ever seen. His apology was met with a volatile and genuine vituperation of words that lasted nearly two minutes. As she spouted profanities and insults I watched as each of the qualities I had come to appreciate quickly melted away. Even her brightness started to blend into the environment, and she crawled back into that crowd of persons who don’t need to be ignored.