This past weekend we held the second annual MUG Writing Retreat in Santa Barbara. Between hours of writing furiously (a certain member *cough* Anthony *cough* wrote 8,000 words!), we held a brief Aikido workshop, played Resistance, and grabbed a taste of SB with dinner at Zaytoon and a walk along the pier.

On Saturday afternoon, we wrote to three prompts. The first was Cynthia’s, built from her experience at the Wondercon. See her post here. At Ari’s suggestion, we each wrote a profession on a scrap of paper and passed it to the person on our right. We began with “I have the hands of a…” and had to switch to “But I’m not a…” halfway through! The five professions were physicist, diving instructor, veterinarian, dental hygienist, and bartender. Andrea gave us the recent two sentences for The First Line: “I started collecting secrets when I was…