Writing Exercise Number 1

Tonight I attended a free fiction writing workshop at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble, presented by the Gotham Writers Workshop. I've been toying with the idea of taking a writing class for some time now, and I think I'm finally going to do it. I've been saving up all of this money, but I still haven't figured out what I'm saving it for, so I think I'm going to spend a little. Huzzah. It's time.

But, to get to the point of this post, I wanted to share the writing exercise I did for the workshop tonight (well, one of them) because I was actually sort of proud of it--seeing as I came up with it on the spot and had about five minutes to write it. The prompt was to write a scene in which a character we had created in an earlier exercise enters a waiting room at a therapist's office (the type of therapist was left up to us). So, here it is. It feels good to get this down.

Karen entered the room and immediately noticed how sterile it all seemed. Not sterile because it was clean, but sterile because despite the other patients in the room, it seemed lifeless.

She was out of breath by this point. She had run here from her office. She never wanted to be late--not even for an appointment with her shrink. She pulled off her scarf and wool coat, allowing her pink, hot skin to breath. She motioned toward the receptionist's desk, anxious and hesitant at the same time. She composed herself quickly and cleared her throat as she walked up to the window where a lady whose nametag read "Felicia" greeted her warmly.

"May I help you?" Felicia asked.

"Yes. I have an appointment with Dr. Schwartz for one o'clock."

"Sure. I just need you to fill out some paperwork for me," Felicia said as she handed her a clipboard. "You can sit right there."

Karen thanked Felicia and walked to the chair she had indicated. She sat down and began to write her name on the top of the first page, but instead she wrote her mother's.

"Fuck," she thought. "I'm turning into her."