Thanks Brenda.
Sometime back in the 90s when I first began to think about retiring from teaching, I spent a couple of weeks taking a Creative Writing class. It had been some years since I'd done anything but educational writing and I wanted to see if I had any creative words left. The professor was younger than I was and seemed quite knowledgeable, energetic, inspiring and I was thinking it would be a good class for me.
She never gave assignments, instead she called them challenges. One of the first was to describe in two sentences the day that had just passed. The second sentence was to include a statement of fact. So I started writing and this is one I'll never forget:
"It was a real good day for June bugs; so clear and sunny they could see for miles and never once got themselves entangled in the string traps I'd set for them. On sunny days most bugs are smarter than we are."
That was the beginning and the end of my rise to stardom in that class, but I had fun with it anyway. Poor woman was from Connecticut and had no real knowledge of June bugs.
It did give me a bit of insight into the world of editing and publishing, though. And it gave me the courage to write about using old dishwater to get rid of pests
