Heh. No, I find genuine exhaustion produces some truly interesting chinks in my fixed sense of how something ought to be described.

I rarely try to write dialogue when I'm this zonked, but description? It comes out just fine.

It's complete thoughts and sentences about which I can do bugger-all in this state.

Gods. I can't feel my legs; that's how tired I am.

So, I'm curious. Since Teppy's challenge is still in place, why not try for a 100-word opening paragraph of something historical? See if you can get it down in 100 words? And if you can't (I doubt I could), it will show where your needs are.

edit: OK, this is interesting. I just pasted those two opening paragraphs that I quoted above, from FFoSM's prologue, into Word and ran a count.

The two together? 99 words.

I got a tagline once out of the fact that my friend couldn't follow my first thoughts of the morning...I just go on writing as if the recipient is...sitting on my medulla oblongata or something. So he sent me a whole message that was "What the Hell is that?!" Which, being a writer, he used a lot more words than that. So, I wait an hour and clear the cobwebs out first.

is it OK with Teppy if we use the weekly theme for things other than precise 100-word drabbles?

Oh, hell yeah. Here's what I have in the Community Info on LJ:

not everyone wants to write fanfic. With that in mind, this community is just random drabbles. Non-fandom, non-genre, no specific style. Prose, poetry, essay, dialogue only -- anything goes. Just keep it to 100 words (see below).

2. So anything I post has to be exactly 100 words?

Not really, no. Frankly, your moderator is too lazy to count, and is bad with math anyway. Limits make great writing exercises because they force you to consider your word choice, but great exercises don't always make great writing. Shoot for the 100-word range, but don't worry if it's over or under -- there are no hard and fast rules here.

I finished the exorcism scene.

Man oh man.

A wrap-up, an epilogue, DONE.

(clapping) I'm making good progress on the edits. Wishing I had more of a thrill for Saturday night, but...

It's about 2000 words (the exorcism), maybe a bit more. Plus, I finished the previous chapter earlier today.

Gronk. Need to take a deep breath, go back, and reread.

Wow, Deb, that is quite an accomplishment for one day. Go you!

I'm impressed...one thousand makes me e-mail people to tell them what I did.

I don't usually do that much in a sitting; I don't set minimums (telling myself that I have to write a minimum of X number of words will generally produce crap), but I've found that the exorcism scenes in each book have basically demanded a deep breath at the beginning and then whammo, all the way through.