CNF

This is the prompt I wrote in class.  Critiques appreciated!

A kiss, hurried in the front seat.  A kiss, moist and dry--dragging with one lip, skating with the other.  A kiss with one eye open to peek and shiver.  A kiss for the other drivers anxious for green.  A kiss, colon-asterisk.  A kiss with tongue coating lips--electrifying yet wonderfully gross.  A kiss, gradually falling into breathing and smacking.  A kiss missed when saying good-bye.  A kiss forgotten because there is so much.  A kiss to forget there is so much.  A kiss that blooms from pecking seeds into moist blossoms into nibbling petals.  A kiss so hard teeth clang.  A kiss of remembrance--A kiss to never forget that this electricity, this skating and gliding, this man is peeking, too.

Shurin

I'm going to post this anyway even though it is very much affected by tonight's conversations regarding the book and Shurin's style.  I must say that, at first, I was not that into Shurin's use of language.  Scratch that.  I wasn't a huge fan of his syntax.  His language was beautiful--his syntax complicated. I think it was the complex syntax that made me scrunch my nose at him.  After talking in class, though, I realize that this is his style, just like simple sentences are mine.  Like everyone else I was shocked and awed by his brutal honesty and succinct language/descriptions.  One that comes to mind is the hilarious comparison of the football player's face to a penis.  Daring!  It's a subtle hilarity that he weaves into his sentences.  I think what I would want most to take away from Shurin is his ability to remove himself from the situations he is writing and his way of weaving such elegant descriptions.

The Writing Life

I found Annie Dillard's book to be very enlightening and charming.  I found myself often chuckling at her wit.  At first, I was confounded by her mixing of metaphors in the first few chapters, but she made it coalesce extremely well.  That is something I'd like to steal from her--her unabashed use of a multitude of metaphors and seem to work so well together in context. 
Her honesty about her work environment, about the painful process of writing was humbling.  She made a grueling process of hard work, blood, sweat and tears become beautiful.  The scene of her working on the Fourth of July and heeding the June bug's thumping was remarkably striking.  Also, her description of said workspace and the need to not look outside was intriguing.  I have found that more and more I need almost sensory deprivation to get work done and find it admirable that willingly did that.  I find that the hardest part of writing--the will to actually sit down and focus on what you're working on.  Very tough to do.Thus, I found The Writing Life encouraging.  It tied in spectacularly with the Writer's Series event.