Writing free

It was gray January day, but L and I found a café open (no easy thing on a winter Monday) and it was still warm enough to sit outside.

For almost a year we've been meeting in cafés or my flat and when I'm in Geneva on Skype. We have our beverages of choice depending on where we are. At...

• La Noisette we drink moccichinos
• La Fountain or Aime Ses be we drink hot chocolate or maybe thé.
• My flat we sip maté through my silver straws

We're not meeting for the beverage, which is a plus, but to do free writing. If we are at a café we spy someone then free write for 10 minutes creating a piece of flash fiction or at least the first draft.

If we are at my flat or Skype we pick a sentence from a book and go from there. I've posted some done in Geneva because I was working on the computer http://flashfictionexercises.blogspot.ch/. They are first drafts and not polished.

Sometimes we write something wonderful. L xreates some phrases that make me want to cry with their intensity. Sometimes we just flounder. There are times that our pieces are almost identical. Other times so different if it weren't for the similarity of the opening sentence no one would guess there was the same seed.

My schedule is more flue than hers because she's a private language teacher and translator. Lately we've been able to do this two or three times a week. As the school year progresses it may be less often.

Never have I not come back without being motivated and my writing for the rest of the day is smoother.

I recommend to all my writing friends to find a person to write with regularly if you can.