The class I am taking this semester is another creative writing class and it meets every third weekend. This was the first weekend for it. It was a long weekend. I had class all day Saturday and half of the day today. As can be expected for a creative writing class, we wrote. A lot.
Although I usually write at least a little bit every day anyway, either here or in my paper journal, over the next several weeks I will be writing with specific goals in mind. In addition to writing the two short stories that will make up the bulk of my grade, I will also be keeping a writing journal.
I expected the writing journal because the novel writing class I took last spring was taught by the same professor and we kept one for it too. Since this class meets only every third weekend as opposed to every week though, I have been thinking about my writing journal and how I can stay motivated to write in it every day. With the blessing of my professor, I have decided that I am going to keep much of my daily writing journal here on my blog.
It has been a desire of mine to attempt to blog every day anyway, so my writing journal entries will help to accomplish this, but I also think that blogs have a lot to offer creative writing courses so this is going to be a little experiment to see how it works. I have given my professor and my classmates my blog address (waves to Dr. B. if she is reading!) 
and I hope if they decide to read that they also feel free to comment if the spirit moves them.
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For the next three weeks (and perhaps beyond) I will be keeping something that we are calling an “Image Notebook.” In the “Image Notebook” I will record an at least one image every day. I will use all my senses for this exercise and will ask myself, “What is the most striking thing I heard, saw, smelled, touched, or tasted today?” and write about it. Sometimes my impressions may only be a sentence or two, while other times they may be a paragraph or even longer.
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Image #1
I was at the Laundromat and as I was getting ready to load my clothes into the machine, I caught a whiff of that smell. I am not sure if the odor has a name, but I think of it as a dirty, musty water smell. It’s that smell that a sponge gets when it’s past its prime or that scent you encounter when it’s time to wash the dishrag. I wasn’t sure I wanted to put my clothes into the washer; after all, the object is for my clothes to end up with a fresh smell, not a musty one. I put my head into the washing machine and sniffed. I was relieved to find that the musty water smell was not coming from the machine.