I've started a short course on magazine feature writing at UTS. I thought I'd post up here some of the 'homework' we have to do.
This is an exercise in description from last week's class:
There is an empty glove on the footpath that runs along one side of a small park. The abandoned hand-warming accessory has been shrivelled by the near-constant drizzle from the gloomy sky. Around its water-logged leather puddles form in wells that are otherwise undetectable wells in the large grey pavers. The road running along the other side of the path looks like a large shiny lake with water running over it in sheets. The trees hanging over the path give the illusion of shelter, but really they just work to convert the sleet-like rain into fat, heavy drops; the kind that shock and almost hurt when they land right on the part in your hair.
This evening neatly pressed business shirts and carefully-creased pants, kept crisp all day, have become damp and slightly dishevelled as the people wearing them negotiate the puddle-riddled path, and fight to keep their umbrellas from turning inside out. The people who brave the rain to get home from their offices today will spend part of the evening on a bus or train feeling sweaty, even though they are not hot. Public transport everywhere will be steamy as the combined body heat of many people slowly evaporates the damp from people's clothes and hair.
