Next Word - writercize #85

It's Tuesday night, or early Wednesday morning if you're the technical sort, and that means I'm avoiding my "real" writing assignment like the plague.  I like to think of it as giving the story time to develop in my mind while I click here and there and not a serious case of procrastination.  At any rate, in the interest of forcing myself to finish writing tonight and slide into bed before 3 a.m., I present you with another easy peasy next word word play.

Next word is one of my favorite exercises to loosen the brain muscles.  It's simple word association - I give you a word, and you tell me your first gut reaction word in response.  Really I give you five words and you tell me your first reaction to each one individually.  Don't look for a hidden link among the grouping of words ... if there is one, it's unintentional.  Explanations optional, but always entertaining.

writing exercise:  Write the next word you associate with each of the following words:

• wall
• rock
• juggle
• blue
• fork

Click "read more" for writercizer sample response.  If you like this exercise, I post it about once a month.  Search my blog for previous entries.

writercizer sample response:

wall: flower

rock: out!  

juggle: life - feeling a little unbalanced with too many balls in the air at the moment, but trying to focus on one at a time to move things along

blue: sad :(

fork: road - specifically thinking of this Robert Frost poem I love so much (from http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717):

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,"
And that has made all the difference.