100 words

Crossposted to College English

Early in the term, I asked my creative writing students to write 100 words exactly on either "lemon," "asparagus," or "bread." We were working on descriptions, and I thought it would be an interesting exercise in writing something precise and focussed (one of the things many students have trouble with is getting to the point right away and keeping focus). Some of the results were amazing; it was a good exercise, and one that I'll use again. I've given them a few more words to try for their blogging challenge, and I hope that some of them will.

It's also surprisingly difficult. Here's mine, on "asparagus."

I tried growing asparagus once. It’s my favourite vegetable; I love its indescribable, slightly musty, flavour, the strange combination of textures in my mouth – crisp stem and rough, bitty tops. There’s an art to cooking it. If undercooked, it’s bitter; if overcooked, it’s soggy and tasteless. Nothing is better than eating your own asparagus fresh from the garden. Phallic, it pokes up through the soil, the early shoots surprisingly thick, sometimes twice as fat as anything you normally see in the store. At the end of its season, the shoots become wiry and fragile, tips finally bursting into feathery fronds.

Take That! says Tabitha

Tabitha's litter box is one of those ones that has a lid, and a doorway. I made the terrible mistake this morning of, after I scooped it, putting the lid on backwards, so that the door was facing the wall, and making it so that Tabitha wouldn't have been able to get into it.

Well, she paid me back. I came home to find that she'd peed copiously in the middle of my bed. Soaked through everything, right down to the mattress.

Yes, it's a pain. Luckily, I have a good supply of enzymatic cleaner on hand to soak my duvet and the sheets...

In some ways, though, I can't blame her. And it was unmistakeable that she was paying me back in a very direct way.