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FosterMolly

Elee explained this as a dadaist group writing exercise where we begin writing from a provided phrase and every 15 seconds the next person in the circle calls out the last concrete word she’d written (we disqualified things like “the”, “be” etc.), and we’d all use that word next and continue from there. No stopping the flow of words, even if it meant writing nonsense or duplicate words and phrases, and no worrying about making the story make sense. She said, and I can see, that it would make a great writing exercise for a group of children.

Here’s the first part of mine, with provided words bolded (I’m probably missing some as I’m doing that by memory). I felt while doing it that I tried to force a through-line by writing into the words instead of adding them abruptly when they were called out — I found it hard to let go of the train of thought once I hopped on board — but it’s still quite stream of consciousness:

I made my way downstairs, happy to be going down not up, the staircase challenge lies to me, feeling like I can’t catch my breath when really it’s not that hard, I just have to go to find me and what I think about the man who had the heart attack and died. Why am I thinking about this when it’s nothing to do with me? I walk outside and feel the breeze. My hair is catching on my glossed mouth and I look for trees with cherry blossoms to cheer me up. They make me think how small and insignificant my problems are and the fledgling thoughts try to find articulation in my brain but thoughts of death and life don’t seem small. My cats give me solace because they don’t try to offer me advice, and their only comfort is just being and needing cat food and water and changing the litter box and attention.