some writing practice

So I realized today that October is slowly beginning to slip away from me and I haven't even started my writing assignment for the month. I still have the ideas swirling around in there, but ideas don't do us any good if they stay swirling around in our heads! They just get moldy and start to smell bad and before you know it you've got to double-bag those rotten ideas and get them to the trash bin before the neighbors start to complain. Or something like that. But I did manage to get some writing practice done in the shower (not something you hear every day) and thought I would share with you in case anyone else needed some jump starts for their brain as well.

I was standing in a luke warm shower wishing it would get steamy and the following sentence came to my head: "Me + cold showers = no fun." It dawned on me, though, that this sentence could be re-written in any number of ways to fit a different scenario/character/voice/plot and so I thought of three different ways to say that sentence:
1. To say that I disliked cold showers would be an understatement.
2. The muscles in my shoulders tensed painfully as I braced for the jet of ice water to stream from the wall.
3. Nobody ever said cold showers were fun. And if somebody did, then that somebody is stupid.

OK, so they're not Pulitzer-winning, but you see what I mean? There are an infinite number of ways to express one single idea. If you took an auditorium full of people and asked them to write in their own words a sentence expressing "I love music" you would get a uniquely different response from every single person in that room. Just think of the possibilities for your writing!!! Don't like that last paragraph you wrote in your story? Take it apart, choose sentences that act as major arteries and change their voice! Such a simple way to spruce up your writing.

So here's your mini-assignment for the weekend: Pick 2 of the following sentences and re-write them 5 times each in a variety of voices. Yes, five. We want the creative juices flowing. Just imagine two of these sentences are in your story somewhere and you think they're absolutely horrid and want to change them somehow. What would you do to them? (Some are purposefully vague so they'll be easier to manipulate to your liking.)

1. She hardly ever went home anymore--she couldn't stand the silence.
2. Tom loved his sisters but their prying into his personal life was getting out of hand.
3. Annie sat spellbound by the haunting oboe solo.
4. He held his nose in disgust as he walked past the overflowing rubbish bin for the third time that day.
5. Sadly, Robert was never the same after that.
6. My favorite snack in the world is pretzels with chocolate.
7. She smelled the half-empty bottle of baby powder with longing and regret.

OK, so I have no idea how this practice will work, so I'm interested to see if it helps anyone at all. It helped me but...to each his own. Even if you don't like it, I still insist that you post your sentences. It will be good motivation for all of us to see that other people are working on this stuff.