25 Words to Live By

It wasn't until two days after the deadline that I got around to responding to the 25 Words of Work / Life Wisdom challenge put forward by fellow blogger Liz Strauss last month. But it's such a good exercise -- in writing and in life -- that I tried it anyhow. Now, I want to share it and invite you to try it, too.

Here's Liz's idea (slightly modified):

1) Look for something you see too much or too little of, something you're feeling right now or someone/something you would like to describe.
2) Without thinking too much as you do it, write a sentence or two about it.
3) Count the words you have written.
4) Trim the sentence until you have 25 words -- no more, no less. Notice how your idea changes as you distill it and how your feelings change with each rewrite.
5) For a little extra fun, create a Wordle word cloud with your 25 words at www.wordle.net.

Because it's too late to be part of Liz's project, I invite you to post your sentence here -- or to post it on your own blog and include a link to your blog in the comments here. Include a link to your Wordle word cloud, too.

It's a great writing exercise, but it's also a great experience in both distilling and discovering what you think and what you believe.

Here's mine:

Today I remember that surrender is the key to writing and life: trusting that all is in divine order in every moment, in every breath.

You'll find more examples on Liz's site as well as at the Remarkable Parents blog.

Give it a try. It's both fun and enlightening!

Wordl-y Distractions

From the Dept. of Distractions comes Wordle, an online word-cloud generator that's way too effective a distraction from writing.

Here's how it works, you plug in any text or the URL from a blog or from any site with an RSS feed et voilà: a word cloud that you can then manipulate in scores of time-wasting ways -- fonts, colors, orientation, language and layout.

Of the two pictured here, one was created from the prologue of my fantasy novel, The MoonQuest, and the second from the back-cover copy for my book about writing, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

One tip: As far as I can tell, Wordle only lets you save your word creation to its gallery (offering an image link to post it elsewhere). But you can also use a screen-capture utility (for example, Grab on the Mac) to get your own, offline copy.

Yes, it's a distraction -- I spent much more time playing with Wordle than creating this post. But at least it's all about words!

(I first heard about Wordle on Twitter. If you're not already following me on Twitter, please do.)