So I’ve started a new online course over at FutureLearn called Start Writing Fiction. I know, I know. Given how long I’ve been writing fiction, this sort of course should be beneath me, right? But I don’t mind taking it. It lets me try a few new things and get my work in front of new eyes around the world.

So the first week’s lesson includes a writing exercise wherein one writes two different paragraphs, one with three truths and a lie, the other with three lies and a truth. Below are my two paragraphs.

The first person to correctly guess my lies in either paragraph will get a piece of writing from me.

3 facts, 1 fiction

Spring in Puget Sound can be erratic at best. It isn’t even a matter of becoming attuned to it with time; in fact, that usually makes it worse. Even with tornadoes, the weather was never this erratic back home in Wisconsin. But nothing can beat the time she saw snow in San Antonio on the first day of May.

3 fictions, 1 fact

The year was 1975. I hadn’t turned four yet, but would as spring set in. My sister was just two and smallish for her age, able to fit comfortably in the windowsill near the television. Luckily the one day she wasn’t sitting in the windowsill was the day that the dump truck was blown across the street and into the front of our house, breaking said window.