Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Write the Book, Bake the But


Yesterday the 201st prompt on Write the Book came from our own Douglas Glover. Who doesn't love a well-constructed but? If anyone's done the prompt and is happy with the results you should send them to us. We can make a but-book. 
This, believe it or not, is a construction butt CAKE.
Photo courtesy of cakeswebake.com.
Award-winning Canadian author Douglas Glover, on his latest book: a collection of essays on writing, Attack of the Copula Spiders, published by Biblioasis.
Today's Write The Book Prompt is to write what Douglas Glover playfully calls "a but-construction." In his new book, ATTACK OF THE COPULA SPIDERS, he writes: "Imagine any simple declarative sentence, and add the word but to the end." The example Douglas offers is: "The barn was red, but..." Now keep writing. See what complexity you might be able to introduce to this sentence, or another of your own devising, simply by adding the word "but." As he explains in the book, "I wrote the word 'but' and then had to write something else; the blank space demands completeness. I had no idea what I might put in there before I wrote the words. The result is pure invention, discovery, and rather fun."

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