Wednesday Writing Bits

The following is a writing exercise from chapter one of Gail Carson Levine’s book, Writing Magic. The following is a taste of the raw writing I scrawled June '09.  The bold green is the initial prompt and the plain green is my work. 


The first time I saw Stephen. He painted a hex sign on my right arm and I couldn’t move my fingers for 3 hours…
I had never seen Stephen face-to face until that moment when he grabbed my arm, almost spilling my entire lunch tray filled with greasy pizza, a carton of milk and a chocolate chip cookie. My mind snapped from the usual lunch time contemplations of a 5th grader with the sudden and unexpected touch on Stephan’s papery, dry hand. I think that is what shocked me the most, more than the feeling of my right arm being snatched away from my own use, more than seeing the strange new kid standing in front of me. There was no feeling, no life in the fingers that pressed into my hand. The sticky sweat of a nervous kid, the grease from the pizza, the cool moisture left over from the milk carton were nowhere to be found in Stephen’s grasp. It was as flakey and translucent as the crumpled tissue wrapper that my chocolate chip cookie rested on. I almost couldn’t believe it was a human I was in contact with yet his movements were anything but lifeless. They made a continuous motion, moving in circles, weaving a pattern on my hand—a hex.

And that hex is what froze up my arm.

Copyright of Cathryn 2009