The Writers Club of Sunset Heights

A group of 8 people form a writing club and go on writing assignments together in an effort to learn to be better writers by learning from each other.

About this Play The Writers Club of Sunset Heights: 

I was pushing my wife to join some writing group and take a writing class.  She kept saying she wanted to write but did not know where she wanted to start.  She took a class and I suggested she find a writing group for support and help build infrastructure.  

I was not patient with her and as an encouragement I created a fictional writing group and would email her tidbits in the morning.  Much shorter than the acts on here.  The Chinese Café scene is one of the scenes I sent her in email but much shorter and more bare than it is presented in the play.  

She replied to that one doing the exercise for decedent and then started joining writing groups within a few days. I had another ½ finished play in my drawer and had started working on it but decided writing a play about  a writing group would be more fun to do instead and bumped it up in priority on the list of things to work on.  

It is a list of writing exercises, all of which I have personally done that are done in the context of a fictional writing group.  Just like an athlete does drills to improve pieces of his game I think  a person writing should take time to work writing drills to sharpen their skills.  I personally think that is as important as research, editing and rough draft writing.  This play is a fictional account of some of the exercises I have done in the past. 

The footnotes are in the appendix as opposed to at the bottom of the page listed.  I personally think it is ok to cheat and look at the endnotes first before reading something.  It gives your perspective of that writing.  If you look at my endnotes before reading this play I will think you are clever as opposed to “cheating”. 

Lastly, the characters are actually not based on anyone I know.  For instance I didn’t look at someone named Alicia and remember a woman named Alicia or something else to model the fictional Alicia on. I find it interesting that others do that but if you are reading this and find pieces of the character in you that are purely coincidental  I did not model them on any real life person.  Have fun reading my presentation and I would love to hear you did some of the exercises some day.  If you did I can be emailed.

I put the verbal exchange in italics and the non verbal parts in normal text.

Characters: 

Alicia rebelliously daring her everyday  goal is to buck the status quo.  If only the status quo wasn’t such a moving target!  She studied sociology in college and found a permanent curiosity in social morays and how they impacted cultural norms. She is 25 

Lindon:  An enigma.  Can find 0bsurerity in everything and often is the creator of obscurity even when with apparent clarity is present.  He studied philosophy in college and eventually took an operations management position in the corporate world. However he finds his free time best fulfilled as an amateur writer and philosophical thinker. At 41 he found the world doesn’t want philosophers without a doctorate so writing became he releases for the abstractions in his head. 

Max.  The oldest at  43.   Never married and slightly overweight.  An overthinker who delights in finding a process and drilling down into that process.  He studied cultural anthropology in college 

Mindy The nihilist of the group, driven by apathy is her favorite saying..  An armchair philosopher, she studied journalism but eventually found creative writing so much more rewarding than reporting on issues. At 38 she is the 2nd oldest in the group. Footnote 1  

Morris:  Always late to the party.  He shows up late in this play.  A 37 year old with a degree in finance.  Morris is oddly much more creative than he is practical.  Lucky software does a lot of his tactical work but he finds it un-filling.  One day he discovered the writing club and found a passion he did not know he had. 

Sara:  Mid 30’s very passionate about even the most mundane topics.  Everything is worth fighting for in her opinion. She studied marketing in college and found she excelled at written marketing collateral.  One day she eventually wondered if she could do as well in creative writing. 

Tiff Feels like Tiffany makes her seem too pretentious . She is in her late 20.s Awkward and shy and wants to use writing as a way to bare her soul to the world. She is an introvert even among introverts. A rough break up gave her pause and caused her to seek out like minded writers to explore writing topics with as a group. 

You:  Yes you the reader.  There will be many You’s.  Many of you will be creative.  Many of you will be different than most.  Some of you will already belong to writing clubs but many of you will not. Some of you feel you have a story to tell.  For some of you writing is a compulsion.  For some of you this is a fun weekend and evening hobby.  Some of you have reasons not in this paragraph but here you are reading my play and thinking about writing something.   

However it is not enough to read it.  You are part of it.  You will go to restaurants, museums, parks and other places with the crew as part of the writing club.  And most importantly, you can and should do the same exercise as the rest of the group.  Welcome to The Writers Club of Sunset Heights.  May you enjoy the exercise and one day be inspired to join an actual writing club.  As much as writing is seen as a loner activity, building infrastructure can or break your writing project. 

Please introduce yourself and tell us how you got here. 

In addition I hope you find a little bit of yourself in each of these characters and that you find the locations and topic though provoking.  

Introduction and Acts 

Welcome to The Writers Club of Sunset Heights 

Act 1:  Alice’s Apartment 

Act 2: Chinese eating delights 

Act 3 Juxtaposition Museum 

Act 4 Personification in the Park 

Act 5 Tubing Anthropomorphized 

Act 6: Alluding in the Alley 

Act 7  Midnight foreshadowing 

Act 8: A small circle of friends say goodbye and good writing ! 

Opening Scene:    Alicia Apartment: 

Alicia  "Welcome to the writers club!  I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for responding to my emails.  This will be our last time to meet in an apartment!   After this all of our meetings will be out in the open and the cafes and museums will be our literary canvases!"

Lindon:  "Hmm…erudite idea. I would change canvas to tarp.  Leaves more to the imagination."

Sara:  "This is awesome!  I have been looking for a group like this for ½ a decade! "

Mindy: "Where did you look? "

Sara: (caught off guard by the question) :  Online, in the library, at community centers, at the colleges both the local university and community college. 

Max: "Those could be cool places to go in addition to cafes and parks." 

Mindy: "We could go to a church a lot of storytellers in those places"…..

Alicia "I like the energy.  I wanted to create the group but I don’t want there to be a leader.  This organization is a headless beast with a lot of tentacles.  Please, while I get water and sodas please introduce yourselves started with you Max" (pointing at Max). 

Max: "I am Max.  I studied cultural anthropology in college but got a job in tech support.  I got my writing bug there and just want to explore it."

Mindy:  "Hi I’m Mindy.  I would have joined AA to meet people but apparently you have to be an alcoholic to join.  I have never drank so …….. Anyway, just kidding.  I studied journalism in college, graduated and found writing fiction much more entertaining then reporting on reality."

Lindon:  "I am Lindon.  I studied philosophy in college.  It was fun but I found more entertainment, more value in writing in just the writing part of it.  Even when I lost the debates.  It was just fun to pen something."   

Sara: Waves, "Hi I am Sara.  Nice to meet you.  At this point Alicia has come back and is handing out drinks.  I have been here before.  Not here but more in  other writing groups.  I feel they just tried to motivate each other to write and not really be a group that learns about writing techniques.  I think that is what interests me in Alicia’s endeavor, more than anything. The idea of taking one writing technique per day and scrubbing it as a group…has appeal."

Tiff:  "My name is Tiff.  I don’t like to be called Tiffany.  I am in a shell and I need to come out.  I like to study techniques with my peers and learn to communicate with other potential writers.  I think you are left Alicia"

Alicia:  "Hi, Alicia" pointing at herself. "I am probably the only blaring extrovert who created a writing group.  I will use this group to learn to swim upstream and be a more active listener like my writing friends online who are largely introverts.  I studied sociology in college and my senior undergrad dissertation was on creative writing and its impact on society.  Which means I was going to make it into a group like this one day.?"

Lindon:  "Wait! Tiff and Sara What did you two study in school?" 

Sara:  "I have a BA in marketing.  I do that for a living.  Actually really boring stuff in contrast to this stuff."

Tiff: "Ironically English literature.  I think I am one of the few from my graduating class who has yet to be published.  I guess this is my last stand-at least for my 30’s."  

You:  Insert your story and tell us how and why you would consider joining a writing club.  This club or any real life club.  

Alicia:  "So I have an idea and I want to know what you think of it.  I have these hat" she says this while grabbing 2 top hats from a chair.  "I want everyone to write a place they would like to meet once a month and a topic for each meeting.  You can pick 2 if you want.  In the first hat put the topic on a piece of paper and on the second put the place.  Put your initials on your paper."  

Alicia:  "Then each of us will roll these crap dice and the highest roll goes first picking a topic. The second highest roll picks the location.  We keep going in order until we run out of slots on my topic/ location sheet.  Looking around she asks, who is rolling first?" 

Sara:  "Perfect!" As she takes the dice for her roll. 

Nobody else says anything agreeing by position of silence.  Lindon grabs the dice and rolls after Sara.  The curtain falls as the newly formed team rolls their topics and locations which will be presented in each chapter. Welcome to the writers club where topics are contrasted with locations. Everyone is here to learn not only specific techniques but from each other’s imagination. 

Act 2 Chinese café :  Asymmetrical synonyms  

The group is in a Chinese Café called Shi Good Fortune.  The place is dimly lit with black tables and black chairs attached to a black floor.  The brick walls are decorated with artwork.  Swords, a fake lion head, mirrors and lit candles placed in such a way that the light from the candles reflect off of the wall mirrors.   A few people are seated at various tables, many of them appearing oriental.  Two employees stand near the counter and one is cruising through his phone messages. 

Alicia:  "Tiff you picked this place right?"

Tiff:  "No I think it was Sara?" 

Sara:  "It was me" raising her hand ½ way up.  

Tiff: "I picked the exercise.  I should probably explain it."  

Alicia: Nods in agreement and the rest of the crew look at Tiff. 

Tiff:  "Ok each of us has a fortune cookie. We are going to spin this chopstick…"

Max: interrupting "is it bad luck to spin a chopstick?" 

Lindon:  "No, it is bad luck to spear it into your bowl and leave it." 

Most of the table laughs.  Tiff continues

Tiff:  "We, or Lindon, are going to spin the chopstick. When it stops that person will open their chopstick and reveal the poetic verse inside.  Then each of us will think of a word related to a special word that we decide is inside the cookie.  We must use our similar word but not in the context provided by the original sentence."

Mindy:  "Oh cool asymmetrical synonyms."  Footnote 2: 

Alicia:  "What are asymmetrical synonyms?"

Mindy:  "It is slang from an old writing class I took.  It meant finding a synonym and using it out of the most common context for that word."

Sara:  "Oh that is interesting!  Are we doing that here?" 

Mindy: "I think so.  This sounds the same." 

They nod and Lindon spins his chopstick.  It stops dead center on Max. 

Tiff: "Max does your fortune cookie say?"  

Max: "It says writing is a delicacy of words."

Sara:  "I love this restaurant. I love that owner is a published poet where else can you get fortune cookies like this?" 

Everyone has a short debate and decides the word is delicacy. 

Alicia:  "Ok game faces every one. "For our writing workshop today let's figure out synonyms for delicacy  mine is ravenous."

Sara "Responds immediately with decadent."

Mindy: Rolling her eyes at Alicia says  "scrumptious."

Tiff: On cue says appetizing" 

Max: shrugs his shoulders and says "yummy." 

Lindon: "Pungent."

Mindy: looks at Max and says to him "you have the lamest word that means you go first."  

Max giving Mindy a stink eye actually Chinese stink eye says   "The rain fell deliciously from the sky creating decadent puddles that appetized the blades of grass whose motions in the wind suggested they found the water yummy." 

Tiff: Gives Max the I am impressed look. She goes next saying "Smoldering dust dances in the wind.  The Sun roasts the particles endlessly from the sky creating a rain of invisible ash wild in the air but with its appetite tamed by the sun." 

Mindy: "Only the silence of death can proceed the consumption of what was living and is now a scrumptious meal for two."  

Lindon Laughs and says "you feel like a nihilist Mindy.  That was pretty dark."  Mindy shrugs and Lindon while winking. 

Lindon:  Ok I am up I guess.  He looks around the restaurant.  Chinese swords and a fake lion head are on the wall. Chinese characters in large squares are in various random places.  Still looking while he is pondering he finally says  "Sidewalks baked from clay taper the edges of the streets illuminating the smell of bricks and mortar like pungent frosting on a cake."  

Alicia: Gawking at Lindon.  "You are looking at the inside of a restaurant while describing a cobblestone street?  Impressive.  Ok wow you guys are tough acts to follow."  …a pause then she says  "The light of stars sparkle the sky illuminated by the night fire from the moon ravenous to be consumed by the gawking telescopes on the planet below." 

Sara: Pauses still thinking.  "Wow this is hard she starts.  Ok wow um the decadence of the crowd perfumed the festive event with color and joy.  The decadence of joy that can only be born of a festival." 

You:  Pick a word, any word and do with food because the word today is delicacy.   Use that word in a descriptive sentence that has nothing to do with food or eating.  I would love to get feedback from you on what you did one day. 

Lindon: Grabbing notebook "if I am understanding this assignment correctly we now have to elaborate on our chosen split second decisions for a sense and share them via email by the morning?  Right?"

Alicia Right! 

Each of the group writes a few more notes in their notebook.  As the curtains close their noodles have arrived and they spend the rest of the hour laughing and joy forgetting about their assignments and enjoying their food and their company.  More fortune cookies are bought with the meal.  In the Shi Good Fortune  The curtain slowly falls as the group starts to work on their meal in a fashion that would have made Epicurus smile.    Footnote 2: 

 End Scene:  

Act 3 Juxtaposition Museum 

The group is in a museum of paintings from various artists.  A large fountain is juggling water in the middle of the museum.  The museum is mostly quiet with only a few guests.  Employees in black and white uniforms appear and disappear from time to time.  The group gathers near the fountain. 

Alicia:  "What is the opposite of art?  Some of you may say writing, some of you may say crude.  I say it is our word for today.  Juxtaposition!  while looking at Mindy who suggested the topic and the museum looking at Lindon who suggested the location." 

"Oh and this is Morris.  He just joined the group.  Morris, can you introduce yourself?" 

Morris "sure, I am Morris.  I have a degree in industrial psychology but a BA in Psychology isn’t worth that much so I went into the working world.  However the writing intensive nature of that major showed me that I had a writer deep inside of me.  Long after I forgot all that …psychology mumbo jumbo I remembered my adoration of writing." 

Alicia "On behalf of the whole group, nice to meet you. Ok the assignment is for each of us to find one painting and describe using a juxtaposition.  Only per painting with no context, only our imagination to recognize your indignations!   Everyone gets 30 minutes to find a painting.  Then we meet back here in front of the water fountain and do our adult show and tell!"

Everyone fans out and starts to look at paintings at various locations of the museum.  Each with a notebook in hand as if doing an assignment.  In 30 minutes Tiff was the last to return. 

Morris making his mark early says "LIFO!"   Footnote 3 

Alicia and Lindon Both in unison say, "What?" 

Morris:  "LIFO- last in first out.  In accounting it means the last items purchased or produced are the first to be expensed.  However in this context it means Tiff was last and could in this context be first?  I mean it could work that way. I realize I am the new guy and may be jumping the gun by making rules." 

Tiff:  "Sure I can go first!"  Looking at her painting in the far corner nervously.  Ok, let's go. Her painting is a red then white light house.  A single light shines at the top.  It is midnight and a full moon displays a reflection on the water below.  The water is calm absent of waves.  Tiff looks at it contemplating for a second and then says, "The water erects the land that nests a lighthouse which sleeps soundly under a full emptiness of the moon."  Footnote 4: 

Sara "oh wow ok game on"!  She points to her painting which happens to be right next to Tiff’s. It is of a rodeo clown who is gawking at a bull behind a pin. The bull looks angered at the clown glaring at him through narrow slits in his eyes. The stands appear far in the background and oddly are empty.  The autograph says Fisher on the bottom left corner.   She says: "Quiet anger calmed the absent crowd." 

Lindon takes them to a picture of a man in a tattoo chair. He is getting an anchor tattoo on his chest.  The painting on the wall inside of this painting shows a ship slowly sinking.  The tattoo artist is holding a glass of red wine in his left hand and the needle in his right.  The patient has a hand over his eyes not letting himself see his tattooing. He says, "Shielding his eyes from his sight the anchor while setting his tattoo journey assail."  Tiff giggles at his pun.

Mindy  takes them to a painting of a racetrack with cars driving in a circle. The car in the front has a driver's face inside.  Emotionless he sits behind a wheel indulging in the race.  She says "Driven by apathy the driver circles the track moving fast with a destination of nowhere."

Max: Makes a facial expression showing he is impressed by Mindy, looks at Alicia and asks, "can we use the fountain?  Does it have to be the painting or does this fountain count?"  He points to the fountain in the middle of the museum where they met. 

Alicia:   Considering the offer for a few seconds says "sure a moving picture THAT is creative"!

The fountain is round with water spurting from the center. Eight seagulls align the round outer circle. A stone umbrella is in the middle mitigating the produced rain from the fountain. The umbrella is alone being held by no one.  It catches the raindrops that slide off its edges back into the pool. 

 Max smiles and says: "The rain dries the sky coloring the umbrella a clear wet with its constant  intermittent droplets."  Mindy does a golf clap at this juxtaposition. 

Alicia: Pauses and points to a corner far from Tiff’s painting of a lighthouse at night.  Her chosen painting is a painted glass sphere floating over an island in an ocean.  The glass is large and clear.  A small crack is in the lower left corner but otherwise the globe is unblemished.  Reflections of the water behind the island appear in the glass.  It is almost as if the glass is full of water except nothing is leaking from the crack near the bottom of the glass. Alicia says: "The rugged fragility of the glass creates an aura of invincibility that can only be tapered by time."  

Max and Tiff nod to this in approval. 

Morris:  "I can go next!  This one over here!"   He takes them to a painting of a fog that steams inside of a room of mirrors.  It is hard to tell from the mirrors if we are looking at the fog straight on or if, perhaps we are seeing reflections of the fog in the many mirrors.   Morris smiles and slowly speaks saying,  "The reflective obscurity of the fog in a room of mirrors creates an endless room of confinement."

Mindy: Gasping say "oh my!  I love this painting.  Welcome to the group Morris!  I suppose it is my turn.  I am torn."  She looks at the west wall then the south wall debating between two paintings.  Back and forth and back again until she starts to walk south. The group follows her to the corner of that wall.  

In the corner Mindy takes them to is a painting of a man and a woman following him on a tightrope high up in the sky.  Clouds can be seen behind them but the places where the ropes are tied off are not in the picture.  The two tight rope walkers are dressed as court jesters each with silly hats with bells and a long thin stick they are using for balance.  Each has a sly smile as if they are getting away with something or someone.   There is no sun in the picture.  Just sky and a few clouds.  Mindy pauses, takes a breath and says,  "Being recklessly careful the two jokers partition the sky with small steps on a rope that seems to come and go to nowhere.  Their obscure thoughts are transparently masked by their precarious path." 

The group smiles at Mindy’s lines.  A silent group admiration for her sentences that are absent of words but bountiful in thoughts.  Mindy in a translucent coy manner turns to you and smiles but does not verbally prompt you to go.  The rest of the group following her lead face you smiling at you and waiting.  

You:  Pick a painting real or imagined and describe it.  What makes it unique or artful?  Write a sentence capturing what you perceive is the essence of this painting and encapsulate a juxtaposition in  your description.  Use the dichotomy of the two opposite words to highlight and reinforce both or one of the words or just make words fun by use of your juxtaposition.  Having fun is the most important part. 

Morris: Looking at you says "The test of resolve is the silence of time." 

Tiff:  "What?"

Morris: "I am prompting our last juxtaposition’er to go." The group laughs and patiently waits for you to share your art pick and juxtaposition. 

Alicia: While looking with a mild sternness at Morris.  "At the end of these exercises we go to the home and we expand on what we said today by emailing it to the group.  Give me a few days and I will give you our next meeting and assignment that goes with it."  

Morris and some of the others nod. 

Sara:  "That was fun but let's go look at art together! "

Mindy: Laughing, art it is! class dismissed."

The group moves around from wall to wall admiring the beautiful paintings and their time together.  The curtain slowly closes leaving the group to their art appreciation and in anticipation of their juxtaposition writing assignments. 

Act 4: Personification in the Park:   

The park is warm on Saturday spring.  Squirrels run up and down the trees.  A mix of birds fly from tree to tree.  A set of bird feeders drips seeds as birds peck the seeds out of the bottom of the feeder.  A slight breeze blows through the park.

A couple walking a friendly pit bull can see past the row of benches on the walkway.  A few people are reading books beneath trees or on benches.  Joggers run with earbuds in their ears absent minded to the nature around them.   A fountain in the middle of the park spouts water that rains back into the base of the fountain. 

The writers club sits on a picnic table with their notebooks.  Max is looking at the birds on the bird feeder with curiosity and Tiff is giggling at the squirrels playing 

Alicia:  "Lindon, were you the one that picked Personification? "  

Lindon:  "Yes I studied philosophy and topics like personification are so mystical to me."

Sara:  "Ha! Personification is musical to me!"

Alicia: "Who picked the park?" 

Lindon: Raising his hand, "me again. I like the idea of having these conversations in nature."

Max:  "Great choices Lindon! "

Tiff:  "Am I only the one who names squirrels in a park?" 

Mindy:  " do that too!  That one (pointing to one) is Mark."  

Tiff:  "I agree that one is Mark."

Morris Looking at Alicia "ok how does this work today?  He is drinking bottled water as he says this. 

Alicia:  "Ok the topic today is Personification and we are in the park so we are playing personification in the park!  We are all going to attribute a human quality to anything we can see from this table and express it to the group. Personification is figurative as opposed to anthropomorphization which we are doing at a later time.   Tonight when we get home we will make a longer paragraph based on our expression today.   Any questions? "

The group nods at Alicia saying they understand.  

Tiff:  Who is still obviously obsessed with the squirrels.  "I can start!  The tree warmly accommodates the squirrels nurturing them in their branches as they chase one another for her acorns." 

Max:  "Ok I will go smile at the sun whose light reflects off their metal seats spreading a shared warmth between the two."

Mindy:  "Um..yeah ok.  The shoes of the runners drum the concrete carrying a drum rhythm that matches the soft melody of the wind."

Tiff:  "OMG I love that Mindy!  She high fives Mindy." 

Lindon:  "Can I go last? I want to hear more of your examples.  This one might be hard for me." The group nods ok. 

Morris:  "The wind tickles the leaves jousting them to dance with the blades of grass below that sway back and forth in rhythm to the caressing wind."

Sara:  With a strategic pause says "the birdfeeders spin joyously spreading its wealth of seeds to the sparrows that rest on its shore." 

Alicia:  "I like that Sara. Ok I guess I am up.  The dog leash melds hands with the owner and the  dog complimenting the existing bond between the two of them.   Ok Lindon that gets us to you."

Lindon: "Ok."  He looks around pondering the scene before him.  "The fountain in defiance to the sky pushes water up at the clouds daring gravity to push it back down."

You:  Walk outside.  You don’t have to be in a park.  Look at something outside and write a quick blurb using personification to describe your surroundings.  Later expand on it in a written paragraph.  Have fun.   

The group nods at your use of personification.  They went another round because the answers were so short but so satisfying.  Joggers run by, ducks waddle in the water, chirping comes from the trees.  The serenity is enhanced by the smiling sun whose warmth caresses the leaves and everything else beneath those leaves. 

Act 5 Tubing Anthropomorphized:   

A river with slow moving water sits in front of the team.  It is early in the morning and steam is coming off the cool water. A couple of other tubers from the rental places can be seen in the distance.  

The group is gathered at the launch point of the tubing company each with a tube from the rental company.  The young kids manning the tubing launch station are mostly bored due to lack of business.  A few are on their cell phones looking up to take cash and pass over a tube.  Maps are at the pay station that tell the tubers how to get to the end station to turn in their tubes.  The group gets their tubes and has a quick chat before launching for today’s exercise. 

Sara:  "Why are we at this river?  What is on your mind Alice?" 

Alice:  With a sly smile.  "Well……our topic today drawing from the hat was anthropomorphization and tubing! "  

Max:  Laughing as he says this, "Who put tubing?"

Alice: presents just smiles but does not answer 

Tiff: Points at Lindon but does not say anything 

Lindon:  "So ok you got me!  I like tubing!  It helps me think.  Some people play golf, others sit in a bath and me…I like tubing to stimulate me." 

The group sits in their tubes and Alice speaks first. 

Alice:  "Ok we are going to take turns finding animals in nature as we tube down this river.  The map says it should take us about 90 minutes to get to the tubing exit station.  Your job is to observe the nature here and anthropomorphize what you see.  Got it?"

Lindon:  "I may go later.  Can anyone tell me a practical definition of anthropomorphization?" 

Sara:   "Lindon, in the shortest simplest expression when you give an animal or object human characteristics in a literal sense." 

Max;  "There is a thin line between personification and anthropomorphization."

Alice:  "That is a true statement.  If you muddle your answer with personification do not sweat it.  It is just an exercise for fun." 

Lindon nods and says: "Thanks" while looking at Sara. 

Alice:  "We are on this river for 90 minutes.  Don’t be in a hurry to take a turn.  As a matter of fact I don’t think anyone should go for at least 15 minutes or longer into our tubing trip.  No hurry at all.  Most of this is enjoying the tubing trip that Lindon suggested for us.  Oh and Sara thank you for the topic!"  

Sara nods and points down the river saying nothing. 

15 minutes into the trip.  Birds fly from the branches and the water is clear enough that some fish can be seen close to the surface of the water.  They darted about almost as quickly as they came into view.  

A couple turtles can be seen on logs and a single frog is on the shoreline.  Birds flying high overhead are not part of the river culture at all.  A single snake slithers in the distance rippling the water with its slithering motion in the water.  A number of squirrels can be seen in the distant trees scaling up and down the trees.   

Max:  "Ok I am going!  Giddy squirrels jest at one another hiding their coveted nuts from one another while aspiring to attain the others fruitful obtainment!"

Tiff:  "Love it!  I like how you labeled nuts as a fruit and used it in a completely different context." 

Max: Smiles at Tiff’s approval holding up his can of tea in a symbolic toast. 

Alice: Looks at Tiff because she spoke which only means it is Tiff’s turn by proxy of her giving Max feedback. 

Tiff:  "Ok your look is noted she acknowledges."  She looks around and then remembers seeing the snake move from the south bank to the north bank.   She says, "The snake sailed the quiet waters alone in his pensive journey that he has now partaken in for thousands of days.  Oh wait that is personification.  One second"…… She pauses for 5 and continues,  "The snake sips the water and then gulps it to propel itself through the ripples that it creates."

Max: Toasts again looking at Tiff which makes her return the toast with her can of sprite.  

Morris:  "I think I am up.  The chatty waterflies dart back and forth skimming the water busy in tasks the others have long ago processed as menial.  The waterflies see the propensity of motion as fullness in life too busy to note that their dialog is endless chatter." 

Lindon:  "What are waterflies?"  

Morris:  "Whatever those insects are that are skimming the water.  Anybody have enough biology to know what they are called?" 

The group takes turns shaking their head to say no, , now defaulting the term for the insects as waterflies. 

Alice looks around and the group still caught in the lull of a quiet slow journey is slow to react so finally after a couple of minutes she goes,  "the turtles who are sunbathing exchange smiles with the ray that gently brushes him making her content with warmth." 

Lindon:  "I love turtles!  Content is a great way to describe them." 

The group floats some more in silence.  The slow pace of the river and the quietness of the environment installs a lack of urgency in their deliberations.  Other tubers can be seen far upstream starting their journey.  The birds can be heard chirping in the trees. 

Max:  "I like that you mixed the two.  Anthropomorphization and personification! "

Alice:  "It is hard.  It is a really thin line between the two.  Literally and figuratively.  That may have been by accident."

Sara:  "The birds chatter giddily gossiping amongst each other creating jovialness in an otherwise quiet place."

Mindy:  "I like it. I was thinking they were gossiping too!"

Morris:  "I like that too Sara.  Lindon tubing was a great idea!  Ok the frog bobs up and down in the river.  Taking turns breathing the bountiful air and avoiding the chatter of the birds that annoys them from sun up until sun down."

Sara: "Laughing, leave my birds out of this!" 

Alice:  "I think that is what the frogs are doing, leaving until they need air again!"

Max and Lindon laugh at Alice’s statement 

The group floats a bit more taking a break from their exchanges.  A deflated tube is seen laying on jagged rocks.  A single stork sits near it looking in its direction absent to the group of tubers passing by in the middle of the river.  

Mindy Exclaims  "Oh that is mine!  I needed to be though stoked by a stork!  She holds up her can of coke as if to claim victory and says,  The stork massages his sore feet against the smooth pebbles on the river bed floor.  Her alleviation of tension by the stones creates a serenity in mind as she finds frustration in a deflated tube that retired from back packing non river dwellers down the river each and every day.  He silently mocks the tube for not carting humans down-current.  One object cursed by air another animal gift by that same air.  How the air gives and takes gifts by ease."

Lindon, "I think I get this now.  Thanks for letting me go so late in this process.  The water picks up a tad turning them slightly to the east.  As they round the bend the other tubers up river evaporate from view."   

Lindon: Seeing so much nature, says:  "The fish dock in their underwater harbors instilled with haste from the excitement they feel contrasting the calm waters above them."  

Mindy:  "Oh Lindon!  You used anthropomorphization and juxtaposition!"

Max:  "Very cool Lindon!" 

Alice:  Looking around.  "Who is left?"  

Everybody glances back and forth and realizes only 1 person has not gone yet. They look at you with mutual support and encouragement in their eyes.  The look of a group that has now worked through 3 exercises and are on a 4th would be willing to share. 

You:  You are not on a tube but you have tubed in the past or canoed or maybe even swam in nature in the past.  Think of that time and anthropomorphize an animal you saw or even imagined being part of the eco-culture.  I would love to hear what you wrote one day. 

The water continues to swim downstream pulling small fish and other tubers in tow.  The birds sing to the water lilies and the frogs in defiance of the water bask in the dry warmth of the sun.  The curtain slowly closes shorting the river inch by inch until it river is no more.  

Ending Footnote 8 Anthropomorphizing vs personification is in the appendix.

The curtain slowly closes leaving the sounds of the park diminish overtime as the curtain closes the scene.  The sounds of the park linger in the background after the curtain is closed.

Act 6 Alluding in the Alley:  

Early evening.  The group has come to the longest alleyway in the area.  In the city it is known by the locals as the “The Alley.”   Trash bins dot the alleyway in a random pattern.   Fire escapes scale the brick walls.   Shadows dance in the were-light.  Jazz music from the back of one of the buildings sings to the stars illuminated by the dusk. From time to time a person comes into view out of a back door of an establishment. 

The group can smell food coming from the back of restaurants, many who keep their back door open to give the heat from the kitchen a place to migrate. Birds sing in the alley for bits of food. Water can be heard dripping in the distance from an unknown place.  The air has a crispness to it accompanied by a playfully light breeze. 

Morris looks puzzled as Alice asks, "Why are we here?" 

Alice:  "This Is in The Alley…it is the longest….alley in the city and everyone should walk down at night."  Footnote 9: 

Tiff: Cuts in:  "We know what it is, why are we here at The Alley?" 

Alice:  "Great question!  We are here to step out of our comfort zones in more ways than one!  Quick question.  Anyone in their comfort zone and any guess who suggested The Alley?"

Nobody responds for the first 10 seconds 

Max:: "My location.  I like the idea of working on our writing in an urban environment where you are not really welcome but not forbidden to enter.  It seems like a nice vacation from areas that are made for our enjoyment."

Lindon and Sara roll their eyes in union at this explanation. 

Alice:  "We are in a group.  It will be fine if a lot of the restaurants have their doors open. We are far from alone."

Tiff:   Sighing.  "Ok what is our exercise tonight?" 

Alice: "Allusion.  The idea of bringing up a known reference without saying it outright."  

Lindon:  "I feel like these keep getting harder.  Anybody else feel that way?" 

A couple of the group grin or smirk at his comment.  

Alice:  "Ok here we go!  We are going to walk as a group from one end of this alley to the other.  During our walk from time to time each one of us will offer up one sentence using an alluding." Footnote 10 

Max:  Seeing the dumpster ahead says "not all receptacles are used for organizing."

Tiff:  "Oh so cool you mean the dumpster!"  

Max:  "You got me, or you get me one of those two are true."  

Tiff:  "Ok I should probably go."  

As the group keeps walking Alice and Mindy hold hands as if to comfort one another.  The scents of the restaurants with their back doors open perfume the alley with a color that contrasts the drabness of the bricks and trash dumpsters. 

Tiff:  "The fumes that cannot escape my nose escape my stomach."  

Sara:  "I know me too!  Let's get a seat at one of these restaurants after tonight's exercise!"  

Morris:  "And so we can be rebellious in honor of Alice and enter the restaurant through the back kitchen door instead of the front door."  

Alice scoffs at this idea but then acquires a smirk.  

Sara:  "Well, I feel mentally imprisoned by this exercise. Whoever summons Wamba where we can pick which door to enter a restaurant?" Footnote 11 

Max:  "Wamba?" 

Sara:  He was the jester in the novel Ivanhoe.  

Lindon: "That is obscure but this exercise is hard.  Ok he says sipping water from his water bottle.  An epicurean  event awaits us after walking with Epictetus in an alleyway." Footnotes 7 and 8

Max and Mindy:  "What?"  

The group is now 25 % down the alleyway.  More restaurant scents mix with the damp air of the alley.  A walking cane leans against the back of a building without an owner in sight. 

Lindon: "Sorry that is my philosophy past coming into play.  Epicurious was a philosopher who advocated eating together for enjoyment and Epictetus by contrast  was a stoic philosopher.  He was born into slavery and was molded by doing many things uncomfortable to him."  

Alice:  "Oh that is interesting."  

Mindy:  "The crutch of this exercise is the crux of ambiguity whispered to the listeners but shouted from the speaker."  

Tiff:  "Did you say that because we just passed a crutch?"  

Mindy:  nods yeah "I may be reaching for a step beyond my feet" (again referring to a person using a crutch). 

Alicia: "The Botsch of the alley is hieronymus of a drab alleyway and enticing restaurant smells."  Footnote 14. 

Max: "Wow, very clever.  Love his artwork."  

Tiff:  "Me too." 

Lindon:  "Botsch needed more Epictetus and less God in his life.  Or maybe 300ish years before Soren Kierkegaard who may have saved Botsch’s tortured soul."

Max:  "What do you mean by that?"

Lindon: "Kierkegaard, was an existential Christian which may seem like an oxy-moron but he had an interesting take on fideism.  A deeply religious man much like Botsch he felt that faith was the highest human virtue but in the same idea that God was unknowable."  Footnote 15 

Alice: "Oh he was an agnostic theist." 

Lindon:  "Yes. Botsch by contrast created beautiful art from his tortured visions of trying to find God and know who God was.  He seems to strive to be a gnostic theist and expressed that tortured journey through his artwork." 

Tiff: "Speaking of tortured journeys, Morris can you put a bow on this so we can leave the alley and freaking eat!"

Lindon:  "Tiff, did you just go twice?  Also, You has not gone yet." 

Tiff:  "Sure, call it a rebound if that makes it more palpable.  She points at an open restaurant door that smells delicious as she says palpable." 

Morris: "Speaking of being late to the party, the March Hare, (looking at Lindon and thinking of Botsch)  we are the Mad Hatters of punctuality for the food that needs to be consumed!"

Alice:  "Oh interesting, kinda obscure but that is an Alice and Wonderland reference?" Footnote 16 

Morris:  "Yeah I may have been reaching but we are all hungry walking by all these open back doors leading to kitchens." 

Sara:  Agreeing "Ok time's up let's eat."  Holding Mindy’s hand, both of them walk into the back of a restaurant through the kitchen-the one that Tiff mentioned. 

 Alice: makes a yes symbol with her arm by pumping it vertically downward.  Arbitration of aberration becomes the proposal of vectors to enter a place to eat.  "Hope the kitchen staff isn’t too offended by their detour in the alleyway."    All of them are servants to the verbal hedonism they practice in an alley outside of their comfort zone. 

As they walk to the door You offer up your example of alluding.  The group laughs at how clever that sounds.  You always seem to have a way to produce a few laughs or at least giggle with each example to the exercise that you present. 

The smells continue to scent the pale smells of the alleyway creating an invisible tango with the shapes that morph on the walls as the lights shift from time to time.  The curtain slowly makes the stage smaller inch by inch and the Alley, the longest back alley in the city shrinks end to end until it disappears from the sight of the audience leaving only the laughter and talk of the writing club who have found a table after cutting through the kitchen. 

End Scene: 

Act 7 Foreshadowing at Midnight 

The hotel meeting room was given an impressive view of the city at midnight.  Unlike most hotel meeting rooms it wasn’t on the base floor.  It was elevated to the 12th floor with a view of the city night line.  

Alice remembered giggling how the sales rep asked extra questions on why they needed the room from 11:30 PM to 1 AM as opposed to the day hours which is when these rooms were typically rented out.  She sensed he was religious and dug in a little.  Their dialog went like this. 

James: (The sales rep) "Yes we do rent some conference rooms for groups.  What time were you looking for?" 

Alice:  11:30 PM to 1 A.M. 

James:  "Um….why so late" a nervous tick in his voice 

Alice:  Catching on immediately at his uncomfortableness.  "It is for a porn shoot.  You know an amateur shoot that we can upload to the internet the next day.  We can name drop your hotel if the exposure would help you…."

James:  Speaking sternly, "we don't allow those kinds of meetings in our rooms."

Alice:  "I am kidding.  I am part of a writing club. We are working on an assignment for foreshadowing.  The topic is foreshadowing at midnight.  Nothing X rated or even R rated.  Just 8 of us with pens, papers and laptops brainstorming for a writing project." 

James:  "Ok" (sighing) "Ok that is doable.  And you said 8 people." 

Alice:  "Yes, is there a coffee machine in the room?"

James:  "There is along with a projector screen glass, ice machine, complementary sodas, pens, paper and pencil."   He pauses:  "You were kidding about the porn shoot correct?"

Alice: "Yes we will have to save that meeting for a room that has a bed.  Curious, do you have any of those?  Meeting rooms with a bed?"  

He breathes in frustration, obviously uncomfortable with the sex joke.  

Alice:  "No porn, I promise just foreshadowing at midnight."

She was able to reserve the conference room but only because James needed the sale.  But unknown to her James talked a custodian into doing a check mid meeting to make sure no hanky panky was occurring.  In addition he took the time to put 2 Gideon Bibles in the conference room.  Footnote 17 

One was bookmarked to Genesis Chapter 19 to illustrate the story of Lot.  The other was bookmarked to Corinthians 6:18.  You know, just in case. 

Later at 11:30 PM 

The group meets in the conference room.  Tables sit around the room and a number of large coffee pots sit in the back room.  Windows are on the east and south side overlooking the city below.  The windows have sliding glass doors but the balcony has another window that is locked. A few chairs sit on the outer balcony with small round tables in front of them. 

The balcony was long and narrow.  It overlooked the lights below on the city.  In the distance they could see the Alley from their previous assignment.  Or at least see where it is.  Too dark to really see it.  They brought a lot of coffee with them.  Better than the hotel coffee.  Long night ahead. 

This was their last official assignment as the writer’s club. They splurged a bit as a group and rented a conference room.  It seemed more fun than doing an apartment or over a meal.  Some of them brought snacks for the group. 

Alica:  "Who are we missing?"  

Morris:  Counting silently.  "Everyone seems here."

Alicia:  "Originally this was supposed to be a cottage rented by the group for writing but as our last assignment and 2nd to last physical meeting this seemed more enjoyable.  Especially given our topic." 

Max:  "That email was really helpful.  Thank you for sending it." 

Alicia:  "Foreshadowing is our last topic as a group.  So each of you was asked to give us a foreshadowing from a project you are working on.   Who wants to go first?"  Footnote 18: 

Sara:  "Oh I want to!  I am writing a short story about an Indian couple that immigrated to Los Angeles from Mumbai for tech jobs each of them landed.  The book is about their attempts to culturally integrate into their new environment."  

Morris:  "Sara ok that sounds like a fun read!"

Sara:  "Aarav, who is the husband is a gaming developer is working on a game where a city of angels are building a utopia and the players must help them defend this utopia from deviants, or others, who may have a more maniacal vision of that city.  

The Diya, who is his wife tells him late one night when he is working that deviant behavior from a cultural perspective can be so subtle that the person outside of the norm may not even know he is deviant to the dominant culture."   

"They talk about it for a while and Aarav tries to incorporate her idea into the video game." 

Morris:  "Oh that is great. It is foreshadowing because they are the soon-to-be deviants in LA!"

Sara: "Yes! "

Tiff:  "Wow Sara, that is very creative.  I want to read this after you are done."   Sara winks a yes at Tiff in response. 

Mindy:  "I have a really short play where 4 friends are on a road trip from Phoenix to Minneapolis. They don’t have a reason for going but determined their summer trip by throwing a dart at a map board.  They have the 4 copies of the book “Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre” edited by Walter Kaufmann.  They each discuss one author on the road trip ranging from the two in the title to  Kafka, Heidegger, Jaspers and others."  Footnote 19 

Lindon:  "Let me guess your title is “Driven by apathy” ? right?"  Footnote 1 again 

Mindy:  "Nodding with a sly smile, I wish I could have found a book with Simone De Beauviour but I couldn’t find an edited text where she was one of the authors centered on existentialism." Footnote 20:  

Max gets up to get coffee.  Tiff and Sara ordain him as the barista and put in some orders for him to fill.  Lindon adds his order.  

As Max is making coffee for the group two employees pop in with cleaning supplies.  

The male says:  "Oh I am sorry I didn’t realize this room was in use, forgive us."  

Alicia:  "No, don't worry about it." She waives her hand dismissively as she say this. "Both of you come in, we have a question for you that relates to our group discussion."  

The two step in nervously.   Alicia continues:  "We are a writing group and we are working an assignment around foreshadowing.  Can I ask what your names are and what you two like to read or if by a slim chance you are writers?" 

The two of them eyes get really wide.   The woman says her name is Julie and this is Mario. Footnote 21

Julie:  A young woman in her 20’s says.  ""That is a crazy question.  We are working on a play together about a mailroom.  We are co-writing it.  Early stages and no title yet.  The working title is The Mailroom." 

Mario:  "A 30 year old with a slight belly says:  Yeah we started dating after landing a job here as the night cleaning crew by having late night discussions on what we liked to read.  Julie one day told me she wanted to write something.  I did too and we started to work on this play together.  It has been fun."  

Tiff:  "Wow what are the odds we would find a couple working on a play in one of our meetings?"

Mario:  "Actually pretty good.  James, the sales rep who sold you this room, asked us to poke in and make sure there was no “hanky panky” going on.  Something about a porn shoot….or something…."

Julie:  "Yeah don’t tell him we told you that, while glaring at Mario who is always so blunt."

Mindy:  "Tell us about your play?" 

Julie:  "Sure it is an office building where two characters work in the mailroom.  The girl is in college taking a philosophy course and the man in the mailroom is her older boyfriend.  She has assignments from her philosophy class that she brings to the office that turns into water cooler talk.  The play is about those topics." 

Lindon:  "Oh I love that!  Wow I hope you two get that one off the ground."  

Mario: "Thank you, it has been a great experience working on it.  Ok we will tell James you guys were only having missionary sex.  Nothing oral."

Julie: slapping Mario across the back.  "We will tell them you are working on a professional project.  Thanks for letting us share tonight." 

Alice:  "You are welcome.  Mario I am all in favor of you giving James a bit of stress before offering up Julie’s explanation." 

Mario winks at Alice and the two of them leave. 

Max finished their coffee and held up his mug to a toast that the rest responded to with their own toast.  

Max:  "Ok, I am working on a piece about ironically a coffee break.  A couple of strangers sit around at the same coffee shop every day at 7:30 AM before work.  They read different books at the same table every morning.  His book is titled Falling down the corporate ladder and hers is Communicating in Silence.  He gets laid off and having no one to share his pain with he tells her one day over coffee. He kept going to the coffee that he used to go to before work to feel productive.  It is the first time they speak in months of drinking coffee at the same coffee house together.   They eventually start a romance sparked from their shared non-speaking coffee experiences."

Alice:  "I dig that, that is the best relationship advice ever.  Especially if you get married, during coffee time shut the hell up."  

Max:  "I didn’t think of it that way, but good tip!"

Lindon:  "Max, what made you think of that topic?" 

Max:  "It was from my cultural anthropology days in college.  I would get coffee at a coffee shop on Fridays before class.  The coffee house was filled with students who shared tables with each other but never spoke.  I thought about it a lot and changed it from a college environment to a work environment." 

LIndon: "That is interesting.  Sounds like an interesting major."

Max:  "Not that practical." 

Sara:  "Who hasn’t gone yet?"

Tiff:  Speaks up.  "I have a story where a girl’s uncle is slowly succumbing to mental illness.  Nobody in her family believes in mental illness and she tries to convince him to go to therapy on her own and against the will of her immediate family.   The foreshadowing is people around her reference a crazy uncle but mean crazy in a figurative, as opposed to a literal way." 

"For instance she is out on a date and her date makes a crazy uncle joke.  She is at work and a co-worker talks about Thanksgiving and crazy uncles.   About ½ through the story based on things her uncle is doing she thinks he may have a mental health issue." 

Alice:  "That is deep.  Is that based on personal experience?"

Tiff:  "Nope.  Just out of nowhere I guess.  I have had to read a ton on mental illness.  It actually does not run in my family." 

Morris:  "That is interesting.  Does not run in mine either.  I would have no idea on how to write a book on mental illness." 

Tiff:  "Morris what is yours about." 

Morris:  "I am writing a short story about money laundering.  One of the accounts sees unusual entries in the office ledgers.  His co-workers attribute to the 2 owners sexual escapades."   

"The accountant has an apartment and 2 times he takes his clothes to the laundromat and forgets to take the coins and bills out of his pockets.  Pausing.  He launders his own money in the washing machine."

Tiff: "I like that."

Sara:  "Me too!  Is that based on your finance background?" 

Morris:  "Yes.  In college we had a business ethics class and money laundering came up.  Some of us asked what money laundering is.  The professor explained it with a few examples.  I have never seen it in real life but the examples and that class stuck with me." 

Lindon:  "I guess I should go at this point.  The others nod in agreement.  I have a short story too. It is about a lighthouse keeper on an island.  It is a dream job for him to surf and sail in the day but sometimes lonely at night in the top of the tower by himself on a sparsely populated island. For him it is a summer job."

"The other lighthouse in a neighboring island makes weird signals at night.  The lighthouse keeper looks out into the desolate ocean at night while the other lighthouse is running its lights in an irregular fashion and can’t see any ships with his night goggles."

"There is an old piano at the base of the lighthouse that tries to learn how to play sometimes before it gets dark.  All he can do is write long and short notes randomly.  He has no training in music, much less piano.  A local on the island jokes his piano music sounds like pretty morse code." 

"Eventually he finds a morse code book in a cabinet in his lighthouse and while reading it realizes that low ship volume times in the archipelago the other tower is communicating with him via morse code.  They have a few morse code exchanges over time and bond but as they are on different islands never actually meet in person.  Honesty that would probably not be legal in real life but it seems like a fun thing to write about."  

Alice:  "Wow Morris where did that idea come from?

Morris: A philosophical hypothetical experiment called the Chinese Room by John Searle.  Originally it was an argument regarding AI but it gave me the idea for the story in the idea that one person is “signing” to the other for weeks and months on end with the other person not understanding but eventually the other person understands and exchanges with the first person.  The enigma of the story is similar to the situation of the guy in that light tower.  Does he feel like he are communicating?  I never mention the person in the other tower and leave that up to the reader to  interpret.  The fact that the two of them never meet in person adds to the overall  mystery of the story."  Footnote 22. 

Tiff:  "So this sounds like your philosophy class days?"  Morris nods in agreement. 

Alice:  "Ok." She takes a deep breath and speaks:  "Mine is 4 people in a casino at a craps table.  It is play.  Play about games.  Playing with games.  She giggles as she says that.  They throw dice and have small talk. Sometimes they bet against the dice and sometimes they bet for the dice.   Some play the hard six and hard eight.  Some are mathematical, some go by their gut.  One confides with the occult to tell him how to bet.  There are 10 in the play.  Every 3-5 rolls 1 person leaves and another one takes his place.  By the end of the last act none of the people in the first scene are in the last scene.  It is a place loosely about happenstance and random dice rolls.   The foreshadowing is done at random times before dice rolls predicting the outcome and woven into the dialog at the table." (add footnote)   

"For instance a waitress named Serendipity passes a drink to one of the gamblers before he wins big on the next roll.   A woman named Karen Fortune is at the table kissing the high rollers on the cheek.  One of those in the play loses on that roll.  Karen Fortune could also be called Mis-Fortune if one used a more proper for-title.  Other examples come up similar to this during the dialog but all of it is random and most of the players come out about even.  Towards the end the of the characters takes a karate stance before rolling the die and says “this will happen” as a way to wish himself luck.  The message being that winning and losing is happenstance-the stance +happen loosely combined.  It might be a bit obscure and I may need to re-work…."

Lindon:  "No you should keep it!"  

Mindy:  "I think you should keep it too!  The randomness of life compared to the randomness of a die roll has an appeal to it."  

Alice:  Smiling, "thank you, thank you both!"

Alice:  Looks over to you and asks you what you are working on and what foreshadowing you incorporated into your writing project.  Everyone listens and smiles.  

The group continues on offering more critique to one another, mostly positive while drinking coffee and eating pastries provided by the hotel.  From time to time they take a break to look out at the city below.   The city they live in and the city that acts as an easel for their writing assignments.   One of the biggest gains by the group collectively has been how to use their environment and observations to springboard into a writing process.   

As 1 AM etches in through the darkness the group tidies up the room for Julie and Mario.  They all have assignments to do and only a few days to get them completed before their last physical meeting.  The curtain descends as the moon ascends high above the hotel windows creating a slight glint around almost as if smiling at the conversation in the hotel conference room tonight. 

End Scene: 

Act 10 : A small circle of friends say goodbye and good writing: 

Alicia’s apartment again.  The group is gathered where they started, in Alice’s apartment. They are having snacks and chatting with one another.  They are much more social than they were when they were on the first day in her apartment.  They have had a lot of time to bond over the exercise. Besides, this is their last session together.  Goodbye’s are hard and silence can be cruelest part of any goodbye. 

Alicia Starts:  "This is our last session !  No assignment today, yeah!  Ok Today I want us to go around the room and just say what we learned from our sessions and what we plan to do with it."  

Lindon:  "Can I start?" 

Alicia: "Of course Lindon!"

Lindon:  "Personification was the biggest growth area for me.  I looked it up before we even had our first session and I knew that I needed to write that word on a piece of paper for my own growth.  I even studied it and watched videos ahead of time.  I am glad you didn’t tell us about the park ahead of time Alicia or I may have cheated and visited it a day early!" 

Max:  "That was a tougher one for me too.  I felt I grew from that session. We probably watched some of the same videos, Lindon!"

Tiff:  "Juxtaposition by far!  Going into the gallery and finding extremes in the paintings was too much!  I had a blast that day.  I may do that again on my own.  Or heck maybe with one of you!"

Max:   "You could email me and we can do it together!  I would love to do that again!"  Footnote 23.

Alicia.  "That is interesting."  Looking at no one in particular. "Do you think it makes more sense to find a new group, develop what you learned alone or hang out as a subgroup of this group from time to time?"

Morris:  "I think having a beginning and an end is important.  This session is a process of opening and closure and a celebration of what we accomplished."  

Sara:  "Yeah,I feel the same way.  I will join a group again but I think it is important to have a new group and learn from others in the same way I learned from you.  All of you were amazing to share this experience with."  The others nod in agreement. 

Max.  "I agree with Morris. Max presents a slight pause and continues.  But it would be nice to have lunch with one or two of you in the business district from time to time.  I love the friendships I made from this."

Alicia: "I am on the fence about whether to continue this or end it. .  I am not sure.  But like Max I want to hang out from time to time." 

Simon:  "Count me in for the post group hang outs."  Others nod in agreement. 

Tiff Getting the conversation back on track says.  "I learned that writing is not always a solo process. Building a community and learning from each other is important.  Before this group I figured writing was purely a solo activity.  This helped me see that it is not.  I grew from this."

Max:  "More than just technique I learned to do the exercise and let go.  Write what you are going to write and move on.  I used to spend so much time editing that I could never move forward.  I learned from listening to all of your exercises each month that at some point spontaneity counts and you can edit a bit but at some point move on the next thing.  That will help me over and over years from now after we all eventually grow apart." 

Sara:  "Grow apart!  I hate that concept but I understand it.  I still love the Chinese restaurant, Shi Good Fortune.  I love that place! Quick confession!   I did that Chinese fortune cookie exercise after I met all of you. It was too fun not to do that again!  I can say that I like Chinese food but I love, love, love that a poet runs a Chinese restaurant and that he puts poetic phrases inside the cookies.  What I learned though is how others would navigate the exercise and I benefited from seeing how others think.  When I go again I want to invite this group!"  Scowling, she repeats Max’s phrase in contempt:  "Grow apart! Ack!" 

Max:  "I am sorry Sara. I hate good-byes too. I think for me it was the foreshadowing chapter.  I was working on my coffee short story for a while. It didn’t occur to me to add the subtleness that foreshadowing can bring until we had the assignment.  I double back and put that into my coffee book." 

Tiff: "Oh that is a great story Max!  I like hearing how these exercises made everyone grow!"

Morris:  "I think the alley exercise was the one for me.  Being off balance by that act gave me inspiration where I would have never expected it.  I am such an academic by nature that doing things that go against the grain take me out of my element."  

Mindy:  Looking at Morris, "I got that vibe from you in the alley.  For me it was also a juxtaposition exercise.  I tend to think in the middle and an exercise that made me find extremes in a single setting was a good learning curve for me."

Tiff and Max both:  "Me too!"  

Morris: "I think overall I didn’t learn writing techniques in college.  I was in the school of business and then in the business world.  This group,  and places like this is where I will learn and grow and love life.  But business school is practical and it pays the mortgage!"

Lindon:  "I am in a similar boat.  Philosophy as a discipline doesn't really favor the creative mind or creative expression.  I liked how I grew from this and it changed me for the better." 

Alice:  Looking at You and then scanning the group says, "you all will laugh but I made this group because I was so independent in the way I wrote.  I was such a loner.  I knew in the back of my mind that joining a group was a good idea to get me out of my comfort zone."  

"I tried finding a group to join but I did not see any that I liked.  Not even a little bit.  So I emailed dozens and dozens of people. You guys showed up and it was perfect.  Ironically the happenstance of my gambling table is a projection of the randomness of this group, the dynamics of it and the next 3-4 groups I will eventually join or create." 

You (pointing to You) "emailing me on the last day asking to join and Morris joining after the first session were the icing on the cake.  I loved learning from all of you!"

Morris:  "I am sorry I missed the Chinese restaurant.  It sounded really fun!"

Sara:  "We are sorry you missed it too." 

Mindy: Looking at you.  "What was your favorite session and why?" 

Everyone looks at you as you answer.  Lindon nods at what you are saying and Tiff smiles at you.  

More snacks are passed around the room and the mood becomes lighter and more relaxed.  Food, snacks and stories about anything and everything overtake the assignments.  The group is officially done and for everyone this is goodbye.  Goodbye and good writing  Everyone came in with writing expectations in a certain way and then everyone evolved into a better writer than before.   Most amazingly everyone stayed in the group until the very end with no drop outs!  Only Morris missed one session after joining a tad late. 

Goodbyes are always hard but they are beautiful.  Beautiful because they are fleeting.  Fleeting as so many things in life but strengthened by the bonds built in the time between the hellos and the  goodbyes. This goodbye isn’t any different.  Magical by the bonds and shared experiences that preceded this goodbye.  

The curtain falls one last time and everyone hugs each other smiling and laughing before leaving Alice’s apartment.  Laughter can be heard even as the curtain touches the stage floor. The happiness of this goodbye outweighs the sadness of this departure.   Goodbye The Writers Club of Sunset Heights and good writing. 

Epilogue:  

Most of the group never met again.  Sometimes they would bump into each other.  Max and Tiff ran into one another in a restaurant once on separate dates.  They saw an intricate portrait in the far wall and re-played the juxtaposition exercise with one another on the spot laughing at the re-shared experience. 

Their dates were somewhat confused.  Neither explained it to their dates.  It would have been difficult to explain.  I mean  you could offer up what the exercise was and what they said but to truly capture it in a way their dates would understand they would have had inherently difficulty with it without having experienced it. 

Sara took a college philosophy course because she was so inspired by Lindon’s thoughts.  She already had a degree but what was one more course on the back end? She emailed Lindon to ask for help on a paper she was completing.  The two laughed about the use of allusions and the alley and how odd it was for them to do that exercise.  Lindon’s direction on her paper helped Tiff pass the class with flying colors.  

There were other run-ins but always fleeting and sparse.  So fleeing and spare they were tangent  to never occurring at all. For the most part they went their separate ways with a rich shared experience that was never truly duplicatable but certainly somewhat replicable in other groups. 

Some of them joined other groups and others did not.  Some of them wrote profusely as if consumed by a rabid compulsion and others wrote for a while and sorta fizzled out of writing. The ones that did write did get fan emails from the others in the group.   It was nice to know that others from the group were almost always guaranteed to read and support their work.  

The biggest thing is they all grew.  Some found a new technique to help them describe the world they lived in with a new richness.  Some learned the value of stepping out of their comfort zone in writing.  Some learned that while writing is a solo activity sometimes being in a group could really help their solo writing.   Others at the other end of “writer’s bridge” found writing really was not for them. But in the end they all had a shared experience of meaning and fulfillment that was shared but could never really be explained to outsiders of the group. A unique experience for a unique group. 

You however were a black box.  Nobody in the group ever heard from You again.   Nobody knows if You ever joined another group or ever wrote after the shared exercise.  Sometimes Alice and the others think fondly of You and wonder what became of You.  In the end they all hope the best for you even if nobody sees or hears from you again. 

The End:   

Dedication:  To my wife Heather.  I wrote this for her.  She brought up for over a decade how she wanted to be a writer and write something.   She had ideas and penned some but never took that full step forward.  I pushed her to join a writing group, any group for a while.  I thought sharing an experience with other writers and even other aspiring writers would help her.  

I had joined 2 groups in the past and I grew from both of them.  LIke the epilogue I don’t speak to them anymore but grew from the experience and feel they grew from my group participation.  

At one point in yet another attempt to get my wife to join a group to nudge her into writing I made up a fictional group that I called The Writers Club of Sunset Heights.  I wrote a scene that isn’t in this play and the Chinese restaurant scene.  The Chinese restaurant scene was much more sparse than the one in this play.   About the time I had written about the Chinese restaurant scene she joined her first group.  

She leapt well out of her comfort zone and joined more groups.  Most importantly she started writing!  This is after a decade of talking about writing and not really going after that goal. Not as part of her life every week.  I hope that streak continues at least for a while. 

I looked back at the emails I sent her.  I thought hey I could make this a play! The Writers Club became the working title.  I am horrible at titles.  I always make them at the 11th hour but it is hard to get the right title without a body of work in front of you. 

I worked on character development a tad, elongated the Chinese restaurant scene and added a character called You.  You is you, the reader.  I know my wife is not alone in having a writing idea and not working on those ideas.   

I don’t think a writing group can help everyone but I know it can help a lot of people.  I think one of the misnomers of writing is that it is a solo exercise.  It is largely solo and alone.  Heck I am typing this alone in my workroom, not another person in sight.  But having others to exchange ideas and techniques with is how many of us, self included will grow.  It is part of the writing experience even if it is apart from the actual writing. 

In that idea my passion for this is to nudge some of you to join groups and step out of your comfort zone.  Ok maybe not the alley, that may be a bad idea but maybe it is in a group, or a park or in the rain or on a video conference call.   Writing may be solo but writing is also a community and if you are only doing this solo you are missing a large portion of the experience. 

If you do join a group or be aggressive like Alice and start a group tell me about it.  I want to know that I nudged yet another writer out of their comfort zone and into a community experience even if I am not part of that experience. 

 I can be reached at my email  Thank you for reading my play.   Rob

I started writing this to get my wife into writing.  I kept pushing her to join writing clubs to get her feet off of the ground.  In a passive-aggressive effort I made some of the characters in the writers club and would email bits to her making her part of an imaginary club.   

My lame tactic worked and she joined a writing class and then a couple of clubs based in part to imaging herself as part of my imaginary group.  For your curiosity I wrote part of the apartment scene to her and part of the chinese restaurant scene to her.  They were much shorter and with less characters.  At some point I looked at it and thought I should just write this out and make it into a short play.  I made more characters, made it less abstract then my emails to my wife and added more details to the apartment scene and the chinese restaurant scene. 

I also belonged to a couple of writing groups in my past.  My experiences were as fleeting as the characters in this play.  However what I learned is that being in a group and learning as a group has value.  My soft sales pitch is that if you are reading this and writing, joining a group and interacting will likely have value to you. 

I intentionally kept how the characters looked out of the play.  I also kept out any romance and sexual tension.   I just wanted it to be about writing and nothing else. I have been in writing clubs before and that's pretty much  how it tends to be.  No sexual tension and mixed gender.  In that idea it doesn’t actually matter what the characters look like. 

I also made the characters' actions sparse intentionally.  I wanted the readers to find them as fleeting as the storyline and my thought process was that a way to this was by making them somewhat bare-bones in terms of actions and dialog.  It also reinforced the subtle theme of spontaneity that is woven into the scenes. Being off the cuff is a learning curve by itself and can really upgrade or hinder anyone's growth depending on how strong they are at that skill set over time. 

Keeping the characters in character was kinda tough.  I wrote their personalities on a postcard and would look at it for each scene.  Sometimes I had to re-write their lines to fit their personality better.  Keeping up with 7 distinct characters with dissimilar nuances made me feel like I had writers-mulitple-personality disorder.  I would just stare at a character sheet and think what would Max say or what would Alice say as opposed to what Robert would say.   

Writing a woman’s part has been a learning curve for me.  I think a lot of men may write women characters  poorly by making them one dimensional and intentionally sexualizing and/or making them stupid which is why the “bimbo” character is so overused in writing.  I knew if I side-stepped those 2 inaccurate stereotypes I would probably out perform most men who write women characters but I still have a lot to learn.  

I put the character You in the storyline because I started this writing project while trying to prompt my wife to join a writing group.  She joined a number of writing groups one after another and it helped her with her writing. That may be a secret agenda, besides having fun writing this is to get a number of people who read this to consider joining a writing group any writing group. If you do, I would love to hear what you joined someday and what you learned.  By writing this play I am hoping to expand my secret agenda beyond my own home.  

While writing is a solo activity, stepping outside of your own head and seeing what others do will help you grow.  Not so much what are you writing about or what are you working on but more technique laden and or tools used in creating works. 

I started to lean on some of the techniques like personification decades ago after being in a group.  More importantly, I stepped outside of my internal writing box by being around others.  Some techniques like allusion do not inspire me and others I fell in love with long ago.  I personally feel almost anyone and everyone who joins a writing group will change and most likely for the better. 

The idea of writing the chapter on allusion in an alley was me being outside of my personal comfort zone.  It took a while to write that scene.  I was off balance during writing it and had a lot of notes before writing the dialog. It may have been the subtle reason why I put the group in The Alley in that scene.  I was as off balance writing as they were in the scene.  My rewrites were longer and slower in that scene.  It was good for me to work on a section that was outside of my comfort zone.  I do realize I am, as of today, not very good at it. 

More than anything I think building a feedback loop is important. If you read my play please email and give me some feedback. 

In addition if you played the part of You while reading it tell me what you wrote.  Email it to me.  It is hard to be off the cuff.  If it feels raw / unkempt don’t sweat it.  Just getting something down on paper is always the first step. That is the magic of the spontaneity part of each of the scenes.  Once you get something on paper no matter how unfinished it feels you already made the first step.  If you do join groups, tell me what groups you joined and about you.  Lastly, thank you for reading my play and I would love to read what you are working on at some point.  

Rob 

Part 2 about the techniques: 

Definitions: 

Juxtaposition:  In terms of writing two things that have a stark contract placed in the same sentence or short paragraph.  As a writing technique the contrast can be used to highlight one or both of those words as the “power words” of that sentence or short paragraph.  

Asymmetrical synonyms:   Is a game I made up long ago. It is taking a synonym an using it in a different context than the traditional use of that word.

Personification:  Figurative representation of human characteristics in non human things. 

Anthropromoziation: Literal representation of human characteristics in non human things 

Allusions:  Think of alluding to.  The idea of inferring an idea, but not directly saying it by bring up a person who is famous for that idea. 

Foreshadowing:  A subtle indirect indication of a future event put early in a piece of writing. Think of it as planting the scene for a future event that will happen in the writing. 

Why techniques matter:  Almost everyone, and everyone who wants to express themselves through writing wants a way to be more expressive in how they pen their writing.   

I feel a lot of people who are stuck in writing feel they are not being creative enough or cannot be creative enough.  It may be hard to measure and will vary from person to person, but I think often it really is that they are not being technical enough.  Taking just 1 technique a year or 1 in 6 months and mixing it into the way you express yourself in words will add flavor to everything you write even if you attribute it to creativity instead of employing a writing technique. It is strong tactic to make anyone more expressive in how they write something. 

Part 3 Personal notes on the play. 

I intentionally kept the details of Alice’s apartment sparse.  I wanted to focus on the charters and not the apartment itself.  I thought about going back and adding more details to the apartment but self-veto’d it in the idea I thought it would diminish the character introductions.  I like the hat idea of location and technique but have never done that. 

The Chinese restaurant does not exist.  I don’t know of any poets who own a Chinese Restaurant or actually any restaurant.  I have done that exercise a lot but never in a restaurant. It may be anti-social to do that in a restaurant by oneself while in a group which hinders me from doing it. 

I have done the juxtaposition exercise mentally on my own in a museum before.  Artwork seems to be a more amicable medium for that exercise.  I have done that exercise in a group before while pondering a scene with that group.  There was no fountain in the first edition of that scene. Morris was intentionally added late and showed up in that scene to reinforce the fleeting nature of the group.  

The Morris LIFO reference was subtle in alluding to the idea that many people write in LIFO and or in FIFO fashion in their creations.  It is used in accounting and in supply chain but in writing it could mean starting something in the middle or going from front to end. Being able to skip around if you need to is important.  In a parallel many people who write, self included, move from writing FIFO and LIFO to create a weighted average.  It is different then in accounting and supply chain but conceptually not that different. 

The park and the river that is in the play is not based on an actual park.  I just abstractly had one in my head and put the pieces in, like the man walking his dog, to create the speaking scenes I needed.  I actually have “tubed” only a few times.  That scene in terms of the tubbing part was harder for me to write. 

The chapter Allusions in the Alley was the hardest for me to write.  That is a weak technique for me and that probably comes through in that scene. Juxtaposition and asymmetrical synonyms were the easiest for me to write.  I still had the challenge of writing in character for each character though.  The characters being off balance by being in The Alley was sorta symbolic on how off balance I was in writing that scene. 

Foreshadowing at midnight was originally supposed to take place in a cozy cottage at midnight in the woods but it was too hard to build the “writing ambience” because they were in a single cottage with little outside stimulus.  Alice brings that up in the act in one of her lines. 

Mario and Julie in the hotel, in Foreshadowing at Midnight are main characters in a play I am really far along that has a working title of The Mailroom.  Their cameo is foreshadowing my next play to be posted. 

Footnotes: 

Footnote 1 in Characters:  Driven by Apathy.  I said that a few times out loud to express people who work hard not to work.  It caught on locally.  It is currently my wife’s favorite juxtaposition.  It ties into Mindy’s personality and comes up a few times from her in the play.

Footnote 2 in Act 2 Chinese Cafe:  I wrote this originally as a really abbreviated email to entice my wife to take a writing class/ join a writing club.  It actually worked and then I paused and thought I could write my emails to her out and turn it into a play which eventually became this play. 

Footnote 3 in Act 3: LIFO:  Last in First Out.  In accounting it means most recent products are the first expense.  This link does a pretty good job of explaining just in case you find Accounting processes fascinating. 

Footnote 4 in Act 3:  It is a painting we have in our home but I can’t find the painter.  The rest of the paintings are figments of my imagination.   I did the Juxtaposition exercise once with that lighthouse painting but I don’t have it anymore and it is not in this play.  The Juxtaposition exercise really lends itself to art which often has extremes captured in a single canvas. 

Footnote 5 Acts 4 and 5: Difference between personification and anthropomorphizing:  Mostly figurative vs literal.  Anthropomorphizing culturally has been attributed to debates on the existence of God when defining the meaning of the debated deity as anthropomorphic vs celestial.  However divorcing your understanding of connotation in the use of the word will give you a better idea of how to use it artistically/ expressly in writing.  

Footnote 11 in Act 6 Wamba:  The court jester in Ivanhoe:  He was a dark comic in the book.

Footnote 7:  in Act 6 Epicurus:  A Greek philosopher Est life 341 BC- 270 BC This is the best link on him and I have found.  His quotes on eating as a group for socialization and his poem The problem of Evil 

His projected lifespan seems really long given the lifespan of people alive in those times. 

Footnote 8 in Act 6 :  Epictetus:  A Greek philosopher who is projected to have lived in 55-135 CE.  LIke footnote 12 the duration of his project life is really long given when he lived. He is most famous for his Stoic writings (philosophy of stoicism)  

Footnote 9 in act 6  A Dutch painter who lived from 1450-1516.  He was very religious and tortured by his connection to Christianity.  His paintings often reflect the pain he may have felt. 

Footnote 10 in Act 6 Soren Kierkegaard was a Dutch Philosopher 1813-1855.  LIke Botsch he was a Christian but had a more figurative understanding of the Christian God. One of his greatest contributions to philosophy was his writings on Fideism and how it related to religion. 

  

Footnote 11 in Act 6 Alice in Wonderland a book by Lewis Carroll.  Available on the project Gutenberg's website here:

Footnote 12 in Act 7:   Gideon Bibles are often in US hotel rooms as a way to keep Jesus in people’s lives when they are traveling.

Footnote 18 in Act 7:  The ideas in the foreshadowing section are small blurbs in a drawer which I may not may not get to one day.  The one with the players in the Casino is partially written. It is called Happenstance Past Midnight.

Footnote 19 in Act 7  Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre edited by Walter Kaufmann.  Dr Kaufmann, now deceased, was a Philosophy professor at Princeton. The book was originally published in 1956 and the expanded version was published in 1975.  The ISBN for the expanded version is 0-452 00930-8. 

Footnote 20 in Act 7  Mindy could not find a book from Simone De Beauvoir on existentialism but in real life her book “The Ethics of Ambiguity” may be one of the greatest books ever written to project the idea of systems as a barrier to our growth.  Her book The Second Sex was the anchor for what has historically been labeled as the second wave of feminism that started in the 1960’s. 

Footnote 21 in Act 7:  Mario and Julie are characters in another play I am working on.  This is their cameo in my Writers Club of Sunset Heights play.  The play takes place in an office mailroom and that office. 

Footnote 22 in Act 7 Chinese Room by John Searle

Footnote 23 Act 8  Tiff and Max were foreshadowed to do this exercise in the epilogue during the museum scene.

A small circle of friends saying goodbye and good writing was somewhat symbolic:  I used the word circle to symbolize the group as a circle of friends and the idea of circling back to Alice’s apartment for the end scene. All writing clubs have goodbye days and I felt my play should have that too.  I used Alice’s apartment to symbolize that she still felt comfortable inviting them into her personal dwelling space.

Author's Note

Still rough draft working on edits