Denise E Lindquist
Bio
I am married with 7 children, 28 grands, and 13 great-grandchildren. I am a culture consultant part-time. I write A Poem a Day in February for 8 years now. I wrote 4 - 50,000 word stories in NaNoWriMo. I write on Vocal/Medium daily.
Stories (1209)
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Cleaning The Freezer
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise — Make a list yourself of things that are done in small units of time. Here are several suggestions: Naming a pet or a child, breaking up with someone, playing a game such as Risk or Monopoly, washing a car, stealing something, waiting or standing in line for something, packing to go somewhere, cleaning the refrigerator, having a birthday party, etc. Now write a four-to-seven-page story staying within the confines of a particular time unit. For example, a birthday party story would probably last only a few hours, or an afternoon or evening; naming a pet might span a longer period of time but will still be focused on one activity. The Objective - To recognize the enormous number of shaped time units in our lives. These units can provide a natural substructure and shape for a story and make the writing of a story seem less daunting.
By Denise E Lindquistabout 4 hours ago in Writers
Family Is The Best
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise —Stay away from the following word packages. They signal to the smart reader that you lack freshness and are an uninteresting writer. Better than ever For some curious reason A number of... As everybody knows She didn't know where she was Things were getting out of hand It came as no surprise It was beyond him Needless to say Without thinking He lived in the moment Well in advance An emotional roller coaster Little did I know The Objective - To purge yourself forever of stale and/or imprecise language.
By Denise E Lindquist2 days ago in Writers
Restating Fiction Paragraphs
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise — Read the following passages to see how the writers convey information while shaping our attitudes and emotions. In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises an obscure character is killed by a bull being taken to the bullring in a Spanish town. The first brief sentences deliver the objective facts almost as coolly as a newspaper obit. The final two sentences are longer and have a more complex structure (why?), and the string of ten short prepositional phrases that ends the passage not only mimics the rhythm of the train wheels but creates a poetic, lulling, hypnotic effect, suggestive of a chant. The Objective - To shape sentences to do your bidding. Sentences aren't just snowshoes to get you from the beginning to the end of your story. They are powerful tools with which to carve a story that wasn't there until you decided to create it.
By Denise E Lindquist4 days ago in Writers
The Colors Of The Five Senses
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise — Using five different-colored highlighters, mark a text with a different color for each sense impression, e.g., blue for visual, red for auditory, green for taste, etc. Synaesthesia would, of course, be indicated by more than one color. Writers vary greatly in terms of the dominance of one sense or another. The goal, though, is to find passages using all five senses — then to write such passages. The Objective — To heighten awareness of the need for a full repertoire of sense evocations in good writing. Ideally, you should call forth all five senses as well as synaesthesia. The writer thereby evokes from the reader a full range of responses.
By Denise E Lindquist6 days ago in Poets
Tarot For 2026
Three Blue Roses Tarot - My summary of 2025 - Queen of Air: You are a wordsmith, a clear communicator, and 2025 helped you shed any falsehoods in your life. You accepted the truth, no matter what it was, and you set and kept healthy boundaries for yourself.
By Denise E Lindquist7 days ago in Motivation
Bringing Abstractions To Life
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise — Make several of the following abstractions come to life by rendering them in concrete specific details or images. racism, injustice, ambition, growing old, salvation, poverty, growing up, sexual deceit, wealth, evil The Objective - To learn to think, always, in concrete terms. To realize that the concrete is more persuasive than any high-flown rhetoric full of fancy words and abstractions.
By Denise E Lindquist8 days ago in Writers
It's Winter . Top Story - January 2026.
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise —Write a scene involving two characters. Have the point-of-view character presume something entirely different about the situation from what the other character's overt behavior seems to imply. For example, a landlord comes to visit, and the tenant suspects that it isn't a visit but an inspection. Make up several situations in which one character can fantasize or project or suspect or even fear what another character is thinking. The Objective - To show how your characters can use their imaginations to interpret the behavior and dialogue of other characters.
By Denise E Lindquist10 days ago in Writers
