Typing Assignment No. 5

We had a fun time with Typing Assignment No. 4, which was to expound on that old pangram, "The Quick Brown Fox..." I was surprised to have found my wife participating, and this further inspired me also to try my hand at it.

Now, our latest assignment is to work with that worst of all opening lines to a story, "It was a dark and stormy night." This line has been panned for decades by critics and cognoscenti alike; but are we afraid? No! Instead, we see it as a challenge. After all, we're already writing on manual typewriters. Typewriters, I tell 'ya! So a little more salt in the wound shouldn't be any trouble.

Start your one-page piece with that classic line, and see where the Muse takes you. Make it fiction; or make it nonfiction, if you have a personal tale, set in a dark, stormy eve, worth telling. Perhaps there's a family story or legend you'd like to try your hand at. Make it poetry, make it prose, you get to choose.

As before in this series, scan or photograph your one page piece legibly, then post to a document or photo hosting service online. Then drop a comment below this article with a link to your image. Alternatively, put the link in a comment to the YouTube video itself.

Please include in your comment the name you'd like to be referred to and something about the typewriter (just the make and model is fine; and the year of manufacture if you know it). On the typed sheet, also include your name, so I can keep track of the entries when I assemble the review video.

Because many of you won't be reading this article and reviewing the video until at least Wednesday, I'm giving a deadline of July 30 to have your piece written, scanned, uploaded and the link added to a comment herein or on You Tube. This should give us about a week and a half, plenty of time to do a good job without rushing.

Speaking of doing good jobs, all of the previous entrants have done great work on short notice with these assignments. I hope you realize how much I appreciate that, and also that others are reading your work via this project. I also hope this series will inspire you fledgling writers to take more seriously the call to take up pen (or typewriter) and dedicate yourselves more fully to the art of writing. There are certainly some latent talents amongst us.

Good luck and have fun on this assignment.