Creative writing Sunday: using random word generators!

Today is a day off from the alphabet blogging (the A to Z Challenge), so I decided to do a creative writing activity. I would encourage you to do the same activity. It is a lot of fun and has the potential to produce a lot of giggles.

Before I get started on the activity, I have a few pointers for you on how to make your creative writing activity all about fun and not about stress.

• don't worry about grammar or spelling. You can edit later.
• turn off that little critic that's sitting in your head. The critic is your friend when you are rewriting something or when you need to prepare a polished copy of something for other people. When you are first writing, the internal critic is not your friend. Tell it to go to sleep.
• just write, as fast as you can. In this activity, the rule is no stopping.
• Remember, you don't have to create a Literary Masterpiece when you are first writing. That is just too much stress. This activity is supposed to be stress free.
• Have fun! This is the most important rule. You don't want to do a creative writing activity or a creative anything if the activity is less than fun. It's OK to giggle or even belly laugh when you are creating.

In this activity, you need the following:

• your imagination
• a computer or a pen and paper
• a timer
• a random generator, which you can find online. You'll want a random first line generator. You can find one at click on me!!!
• ten minutes in which you will not be interrupted, by other people or by your own personal needs.

So, put a glass of water next to you and get ready for a ten-minute timed writing. You'll get your first bunch of words from the random first line generator. Then it's ready, get set, go! 

Here is my effort. It comes with a disclaimer. "Any resemblance to living human beings in this story is pure coincidence. This story is fiction, generated by the author's feverish imagination."

The random first line that was generated is bolded:

They say everyone who looks into their family history will find a secret sooner or later. Sure enough, I found it. My family history had been hidden for years. The diaries of my great great grandparents had been stuck in a bank's safe deposit box. What the heck was with that? Well, I found the key. I wondered what the key was for. I was a little kid at the time when I found the key. I grabbed it and hid it and kept it for years. People were running around, searching for the key, afraid that some family enemy had managed to steal the key. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. It wasn't just people in the Bible who wept and gnashed their teeth.

The dentist was thrilled with all of that teeth gnashing. He sent his seven children to college and beyond with the money that my family paid to him to repair the teeth that had been ground down by the gnashing of teeth incident that had gone on for years.

As for me, I was clueless as to the dramatic emotional reaction that was going on around me. I had found a cute little key and I kept it. End of story. At least for me.

When I grew older, I was aware of the conversations about the missing key that could lead to secrets that my family didn't want to be let out. By this point, I had already decided to attend journalism school and become a Real Reporter. I decided that finding out what the secrets were that could be retrieved by the turning of a key could make for a great news story or an expose or something to that effect.

The first job was to get the name of the bank where the key would be useful. I had to figure this out and that wasn't too easy. Well, I did. I can't share with you how that happened because it would implicate too many people in my crime. It appears that relieving the safety deposit box of the incriminating journals was a crime, although I didn't know it.

I got the diaries and I read and read and read. Well, now I know where I got the writing gene. It was from my great great grandmother on my father's side. She was a writing whiz. She was also not a very friendly person. She disliked a lot of people around her, and she used her poison pen with great gusto. It seemed that her father had a wife and a few mistresses. He had children with all of these women. Each one. Who knows how many relatives I have? They are scattered all across the globe. 

But then, the bombshell. Apparently, none of these folks know that they were brother and sister. Or half brothers and half sisters. One girl fell in love with one boy and they did what came naturally when people get passionately in love with one another or passionate in lust with one another. The result was a little girl who seemed to not be in the best of health. She didn't die but she wasn't quite there. Everyone said that she wasn't quite there, and that she was very slow. Well, it was described in the diary how that girl and boy who fell in love were actually half siblings...

(ten minutes have elapsed but, wow, that was fun!!!)