Pechaflickr

What better way to start a brand new blog that suggest a unique way to get that creative writing motor primed? To start it up with a blustery howl?

“Pecha Kucha,” a phenomenon that swept the professional world a few years ago, shook up otherwise boring PowerPoint presentations by demanding the presenter use just 20 slides and spend just 20 seconds on each slide.

Now we have “PechaFlickr” — a wild and fun combination of the “Pecha Kucha” requirements of 20 slides/20 seconds each with a randomly-selected set of 20 images from Flickr.

Oh… how cool is that?!?

Of course I couldn’t resist trying, and typed in the word “fluffy” to start with. I’m not keen on “fluffy” as a word, to be honest, but it was a recent word from a group writing activity I participated in a few weeks ago and thought it would be a great comparative exercise. I didn’t get 20 slides, and of course you can imagine the types of images that generally came up, but still… for a quick-start writing activity, it was one of the best I’ve experienced.

Here’s the piece of “fluffy” writing I came up with (with just a few edits to translate my shorthand into something readable):

Mountains of white snow, maybe a foot and a half, on a picnic table… the blue puffy clouds overhead threatening to smile away that snow…. Inside, a brown-faced cat peers out the window, maybe imagining cold. A leopard hugs itself in the zoo downtown, its blue eyes unyielding. On the farm a black rooster stares you down while the snow starts to fall, gently, again. The white cat inside, perched on its paisly tablecloth ignores plea for it to get down from the table, trying to keep it away from those brownies, their green speckled candy or something green you don’t want to think about. Feeling ignored, the white cat jumps into your arms, while a third cat, fat, proud of it with its “I’m not fat I’m husky name” tag watches while a brown all-over cat watches from the couch. Outdoors, the pale pink strands of a seed-filled flower pod soak up the light from the pale blue sky and its spackle of white clouds. The neighbor’s black dog, a spot of white beard on its chin, looks longingly at you. And you? You’re dreaming of a flight over the clouds, the sun setting or maybe rising in pale orange along the horizon. The song sparrow sings for you on the stoop of its birdhouse, and when that pale pink, seedy pod has grabbed your attention again you see it has transformed into a strong, thin bloom with loud, bright colors.

Type fast! Twenty seconds isn’t long for capturing all that will swarm through your head like the buzzing of a million bee-like ideas.

Ready? Type any word into the pink bar and see what happens. FYI… I opened my computer’s “Notepad” option so I could type along while the images came onto the screen.

Here’s the link.
http://pechaflickr.net/

Let us all know how it works for you!