Lipograms

Recently, I have been scrounging around the internet to find writing prompts.  Sometimes they are helpful, but often they merely tell me to "imagine you won the lotto, and write about what you would do with it." I dunno, I don't find that super appealing.

Anyway, while looking up the spelling of "renovation" the other day (there's just one 'n'), I was taunted into clicking off course to view one of merriam-webster.com's little articles. The one I read was about words that are strange and hardly ever used, but altogether smart, well-intending and in good standing with their communities.

I thought this particular one smacked of a writing prompt:

#6 Lipogram:

Definition:

a writing composed of words not having a certain letter

About the Word:

Lipo– means "lacking; without," and gram comes from gramma, meaning "letter."

The most challenging lipogram – a decidedly constrained form of writing – excludes E, the most common letter in English. In 1939, Ernest Vincent Wright published Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 words without using the letter "E." Below is a lipogram version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" lacking the letter O (from Peter Blinn, curiousnotions.com):

   

"Mary had a little lamb

The bleached and chalky kind.

And everywhere she went, the lamb

Was rarely left behind."

This is so stupid...I love it

Challenge, O Challenge!!! (Not the little dog, the lipogram). I mean, I don't usually write limericks. It probably has something to do with the fact that I don't speak in limericks......I thought I would write a short paragraph instead. So here it goes! Minus "o" as well:

My grandma was adrift in the hallway. And I mean the up-in-the-air kind. Her feet were gathered in a twist like the drawn spirits seen in children's t.v. images, and the rest of her was a transparent grey. She was twisting her hands and I read a slight guilt in her face.
"What's up, Gramma?" I said.
She turned her face my way and replied, "The car keys, they fell in the driveway," and disappeared.
At least these appearances will be useful.


Take THAT, letter O!!!! Go back to Sesame Street where you came from!

If you have any sentences/limericks/poems/sonnets/short novels that you would like to share that also are lipograms, please do!!! (The combox works well, people).


rmvb

I WAS going to go make dinner.....

....but the housing people must have been attacked, because the water is indeed NOT back on at 5pm like they said it would be. It's 5:18 and I want to put my chicken in the oven before I become ravenous.

I decided to do this to quell my aching belly.

"My books can act as catalysts. They can provoke a reaction in a person that is already ready for change. I don’t think my readers are reading the books trying to learn how to change. You read a book at the right moment and then you see that you have already this volcano inside of you ready to explode and the book uncaps this volcano." - Paulo Coelho

I read this dude's blog all the time. Usually he will post about 3 a day, but that's ok because only one is usually in English. He has some sketchy relativistic ideas sometimes about who God is, et. al., but he also strikes me as humble - not advancing himself above any goodness just out of human self-promotion. Well, often enough, I imagine. I like how he serves up his soul via books, but doesn't expect anyone to clap for him or praise what is there. If they notice it he merely nods in their direction and thanks them for their interest. He likes the success and effect his work seems to have on people that he inevitably receives by praise, but, as the above quote lets us know, he doesn't presume that anything he writes will necessarily mean anything to anyone - he just knows that it can. If the story does indeed do that, then it is merely a component in a lengthy conspiracy for that person to change, and the book is not the god of the renovation. And so, without the pride of thinking he will effect eternity in one fell novel, he creates, and offers, and is satisfied with life. He does because of potential...just in case.

"Sure, I'll write a best seller. Then I'll go practice archery. No big deal."

 I'm sure there should be some sort of finale for this post, but really all I have to comment on is how much courage that takes, how centered one has to be in Christ or self or what-pagan-ish-value-have-you in order to do that. Despite the extremity of those qualities, I'm pretty sure not caring about failure is really the only option for writers if they don't want to fail...



rmvb