My '1000 Words or Less' class has ended.  Last night was the final night, and we wrapped up with a potluck and reading some past exercises.  (No one touched my corn chips and salsa, not sure why, but now I've got expensive organic chips and salsa sitting in the kitchen.)

One piece I read was an exercise I'd undertaken in writing in 2nd-person POV.  When I dwelled on how it might sound, it seemed obvious to make it into a restaurant review where the narrator guides the reader through the dining experience.  I had a lot of fun with making it an extremely challenging and surreal experience, and my classmates seemed to enjoy it.

My second piece was a challenge.  We designed challenges for each other last week, the entire class collaborating on difficult writing topics for each other.  I knew one woman hated the 'flawed narrator' concept, so I suggested her main character was covering up a significant lie.  Another student liked satire and irony, so he was ordered to produce a non-ironic children's story with Conservative moral overtones.

My challenge wasn't tailor-made for me at all.  It was decreed that I write a 'missed connection' Personals ad written by a man suffering from phantom limb syndrome (but who had all of his limbs), and I could only use two-syllable words and was forbidden from using the letter S.  Yeah, that's difficult, but no part of that is a response to my personal writing style, favored topics, strengths or weaknesses.  I was a little hurt that it was so impersonal, or paranoid that my writing voice is so weak and indefinite that no one could come up with a challenge to meet it.  My wife was indignant on my behalf, calling the exercise "pointless."

Nonetheless, I did write a 374-word Personals ad of duo-syllabic words that never used the letter S.  The solution was to use a narrator for whom English is a second language, and that gave me liberty to play with grammatical structure.  The class seemed very pleased: one writer, whom I admire, did a spit-take on the woman sitting next to him.  I take that as a sign of success.

At the same time, I would have liked someone to key into some signature trait of mine and challenge me pertaining to it.  I think anyone at all could have been given my exercise.