Write What You Know - Exercise 1 #amwriting

Close your eyes for a few moments and think of the room or place around you. Think of the details that you would include in any description and make a mental note of them. Open your eyes and, without looking around, write down what you thought of.

There is a a large white fridge freezer covered with magnets and notes, voting slips and shopping lists. The dark wooden worktops are covered in so many jars of spice and bottles of oil and tubs of utensils, that you'd be forgiven for wondering on which space any of the cooking which necessitates these items actually happens.  Surrounded by fice dirty blonde chairs, a pale wooden table fills the other end of the kitchen, which is fenced off by a tatty, cushiony old sofa which doubles as a cat scratching post. A dark wooden upright piano lounges against the end wall, used primarily as a plant stand and nic-nac display unit, but occasionally enjoying having its ivories tickled. The piano is bracketed by large white Ikea bookshelves, yawning too wide for their content, except the top left shelf which is stacked deep with gins, whiskeys and wines. To the right of the piano, beyond the shelf, is a flat screen TV on a permanently dusty black wooden table. This corner tableau is completed by a selection of instruments suspended from the ceiling - guitars and banjos, silent and waiting. 

There is a second, large, brown, L-shaped sofa, which is plush, and comforting. Quickly converting to a double sofa bed, it has been the sight of many a movie-night picnic, or hangover recovery nap. It has a slightly faded arm from sitting next to the room-width French windows, adorned by gap-toothed white vertical blinds. One of the cats is basking in the sun, gently releasing her hair to join the other stray strands floating across the floor, sticking to cushions and luckless guests.

Now look at your surroundings and write a paragraph (no more than 150 words) describing them, picking out at least three things that you haven't noticed recently – things you didn't think of when you closed your eyes.

On the kitchen wall, between the window and the boiler, in a garish red, there is a fire blanket mounted to the wall. Two small black straps dangling from the bottom like legs, ready to charge, to do its duty. On the top of the white cupboards, to the left of the window, rests a small collection of 'junk' for want of a more caring word. A box, which does not contain wine glasses, declares in violent lime green '£1 each, outstanding value. Wine Glasses'. To the far right, calmly hoping to be needed, there balances a white china teapot. No one in the house drinks tea - it is simply another remnant of the many waifs and strays that have passed through these doors over the years.