10/9/14

Notebooking Daily Writing Exercise October 9, 2014

October 9: Wordbank day!

Everyone's favorite has rolled around again! Today we'll look through the following pages to find and list in your notebook 10-15 interesting words or ones that you are familiar with but don't necessarily use everyday. Spend ten or so minutes looking up every word and doing a google search for its connotations and to find any unique or interesting information connected to that word (a famous person, little used idioms, cities/locations etc.) If you pick any words you really don't know well, do a little extra research and make sure you don't accidentally use the word incongruously (or completely incorrectly).

Word sources:
Angry, 'Halloween' words, Steep, Blood terms, Increase, Blue in the ancient world.

(Remember, research those words a bit, and write down cool, interesting bits. This notebook is meant to be a resource for later writing. Now use those words for the following).

Exercises:
1) Write two or three sentences, phrases or lines which use two different words from your list.
2) Write two sentences, phrases or lines which include one of the words from the list and the word "yawn"
3) Write two or three sentences, phrases or lines which use two words from the list back to back (as in, if you picked "glazed" from Blue in the ancient world and "headstone" from 'Halloween' words you could write "The headstone glazed with dew," or "The s'mores doughnut was a glazed headstone for diabetics.)
4) Find two of your words that can be used in two different ways (a homonym) and for each word write two or three sentences or sentence fragments using the word in a very different way.
5) Using the words from exercise #1, write two or three sentences, phrases or lines which use those words in the reverse order (see the examples from #3 if you're confused).

Possible follow up exercises:
1) Use multiple of your results from the first to craft a story.
2) Write a story set at night with an ominous overtone. Include an unexpected (perhaps silly) rhyme in either dialogue or internal monologue that helps to break the tension.
3) Write three short vignettes or lyric poems which are very different, but all have the theme of someone/something on the razor's edge (extreme unease about something). Also have an image/item that makes an appearance in all three.
4) Pick two words from your list that you didn't use in an exercise. Revisit Blue in the ancient world and find a few more interesting facts. Use the words and the facts in a short piece/fragment.