In A Phrase -- A Creativity Warm-Up

Summer tends to be my busy season for work. Our summer guests overlook the dust and the weeds. They know I have looming deadlines for teaching proposals that make it so I have an income next year. That I'm scrambling to prepare class materials for whatever I'm teaching next. That instead of dusting and weeding, I'm traveling to teach or take classes. This summer I'm also taking an online class, and doing background research for a new body of work I have in mind. The stack of index cards with ideas to explore gets deeper every day, but most of it will have to keep for later. Later, when the days are shorter and the weeds are covered by a clean, bright blanket of snow.

For now, my creative explorations have to stay focused on a type of creative writing project called the teaching proposal. The challenge is to a) explain what it is, b) convey the goals and objectives of the class, and c) make it sound irresistible -- all in 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 words.

To warm up for this kind of challenge, I've been playing a word game. Over at Project Gutenberg, I found a 1917 book called Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser. I print out a few pages at a time and put them in the bathroom, where I find a few minutes each day to peruse them and circle a few that inspire imagination.

Want to play along? I'll list a few phrases I've circled. Pick one to act as your title, and use recycled magazine pages to make a quick collage that conveys the mood or sentiment. Here we go:

• algebraic brevity
• alluring idleness
• anticipated attention
• apprentice touch
• ambidextrous assistant
• apostrophic dignity
• arch conspiritor
• babbling gossip
• blazing audacity
• broken murmurs
• a convenient makeshift
• a dangerous varnish of refinement
• a long tangle of unavoidable detail
• a thousand mangled delusions
• a snare and a delusion
• a thing of moods and moments.

I harbor an eternal and imperishable hope that those who review my teaching proposals await them with feverish anxiety. They probably won't see any of these phrases in the class descriptions I'm writing now. In 100 words or less, there isn't room for a long tangle of unavoidable detail. But who knows? Would you take a class called Shadowy Abstractions?