Oddly, I’m finding making time for this class more and more difficult. It’s not due to life getting more hectic, it’s because they don’t open the week’s worth of lessons until 0900 PST, which is what it is where the professors teach. Since it’s not open when I get up and start my week at 0500 on Monday morning, I seem to have lost interest. It is my way, I suppose, since it’s one of those tasks that you undertake not necessarily because you want to, but because of some other reason that doesn’t stem from ultimate love of it. And, well, you know my reasons for taking it.

Alas, I’m getting a start on week two, and I’m putting it out of order. Not out of spite, but because it makes it easier for me in the time frame I have to work with since my brain doesn’t want to work with the class now. This week’s assignment:

In your journal, write down a list of at least five to ten nouns and five to ten adjectives as you observe a scene at home, work, or in your community.

It seems more than a bit silly at first, doesn’t it? After all, who doesn’t know what a noun or adjective is? Actually, you’d be surprised that a great many writers, myself included sometimes have trouble coming up with descriptive words to describe something. I’m often guilty of not having a decent enough handle on adjectives from day to day. But not today.

For this assignment I’m going to be picking and choosing from my office. After all, it’s where I’m sitting while writing this, so everything is literally here at my fingertips. Nouns will be green, adjectives in purple, and I am going to describe things in pairs to have a little more fun with this.

blue papasan

black kitten

grey and white kitten

wooden desk

loaded pistol

stripped bag

purple neoprene handweights

metal handweights

purple plastic jump rope

sharp knife

The second part of the assignment is thus:

In your journal, continue your list of nouns and adjectives by adding in five to ten verbs and adverbs. Then, write a couple of sentences using your list of nouns, adjective, verbs, and adverbs.

Oh boy. Finding verbs and adverbs for my office is a bit dull. This is going to take some creativity and possibly a work of fiction. Adverbs will be in blue, verbs will be in red.

lying still

falling over

brightly lit

snoring softly

drying quickly

stretched far

lifted high

left alone

swaying gently

put away

hanging still

1. The blue papasan is drying quickly.
2. The black kitten is stretched far.
3. The grey and white kitten is snoring softly.
4. The wooden desk is brightly lit.
5. The loaded pistol is left alone.
6. The stripped bag is swaying softly.
7. The purple neoprene handweights are lifted high.
8. The metal handweights are lying still.
9. The purple plastic jump rope is put away.
10. The sharp knife is hanging still.

Shockingly, not a jot was fiction — except the papasan drying. That was yesterday when I cleaned up a tea spill on it. Today it’s perfectly tea free.

Assignment complete. I have no idea what we are to do with these as we don’t get graded on them, but there is a threat of the quiz having some relation to this sort of practise. We’ll find out. With any luck my enthusiasm for the class will not dwindle much more, and I’ll be able to stick with it giving a good review at the end. Not to mention sharpen my writing skills along the way.