Curtis Brown literary agent Nathan Bransford maintains a very helpful and informative blog for avid readers, neophyte writers, and just plain folks who are interested in the world of book publishing.  Nathan is very entertaining, and his blog is a must-read; you never know what you’ll learn or discover.

Yesterday, in his traditional Friday “This Week in Publishing” feature, Nathan mentioned a list of 25 of the best writing-oriented blogs as selected by Editor Unleashed.  One of the titles mentioned there caught my eye:  “Six Sentences,” by Robert McEvily.

The subtitle of the blog says it all:  “What can you say in six sentences?”  There are no prompts, no rules, and no restrictions.  Just open up a vein and bleed your best half-dozen lines.

I was intrigued, and thought I’d give it a shot.  Here it is:

Roger Lindsay sat in a white molded-plastic chair outside a bar in Mallory Square, nursing a cool Budweiser and sixty years of memories and frustration.  He was oblivious to the Key West street scene playing out in front of him:  the jugglers, the clowns, the roller-bladers, and the tanned young lovelies in barely-legal bikinis, all milling around the plaza. 

Lindsay was absorbed in his own concerns; his wife of thirty-two years who had just left him for a younger, wealthier man, and his old employer back in Ohio who had included him in its latest round of layoffs dominating his thoughts.  Now, prematurely retired, alone, and living in a cookie-cutter condo in Hialeah, his depression was palpable, and he sat here, dourly contemplating the closing years of his life and looking for a sign of hope.

Suddenly, as the last residue of the blood-red sun sank beneath the tranquil Gulf waters, Lindsay saw a momentary lime-green neon spark framed like lightning against the deep turquoise sky, the rare natural phenomenon the locals call “The Green Flash.”

A smile broke across Lindsay’s face for the first time in a long while, and he felt a sense that maybe his life didn’t suck so bad after all.

Any takers?