Hi, there!  In grammar I’m studying The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne, which I highly recommend for learning exceptional writing skills and finding your own style.  Anyway, one of the assignments was to write a composition on someone you were observing.  Since I can’t really observe people in a class room environment, I decided to adapt it to a fiction story using one of my pen names, Bridget Donahue, as a secret agent/cafe owner who is observing a person in her restaurant.  Thought it might be an amusing sample of the kind of skills and styles The Lively Art of Writing teaches.  Hope you enjoy!!

Donahue on D’Arcy

by Abby Frierson

For those who seek excitement, who crave adventure, who live for action, greetings.  Agent Bridget Donahue here, on yet another baffling case.  Actually, I’m just observing a character today.  My subject is sitting at the window table of my Arpeggio Cafe, drinking a latte, and reading a book:  Eleanor D’Arcy.

She has long, mousy-brown hair with a tint of amber, dark grey eyes beneath obviously-tweezered eyebrows, and a small nose over a smaller mouth.  Wearing a white tee-shirt, jeans, and tennies, she seems uncomfortable and nervous.  She looks as if she wants to disappear, to melt away, to crawl under the table.  Hmmmm.  Interesting.  From behind the counter of my cafe I can observe so much, yet this one is puzzling.  Perhaps under that timorous appearance is a bold and adventurous soul, a conqueror, a hero.  Perhaps she wants to travel to wild jungles, to humid deserts, to lost cities.  Perhaps she even wants to be noticed, but can’t get up the guts.

What book is she reading, anyway?  AHA!  Robinson Crusoe.  Bingo!  A true adventurer that loves to think, that enjoys problem-solving, that watches for opportunities for bravery and valor!  She longs for new situations, to spread her wings; however, taking flight is the hard part.  Finding the courage to head off into the sunrise isn’t a day job; it’s a life’s work.  If Miss D’Arcy is ever to get her chance, if she ever meets with the challenge of the centuries, if she ever gets on a plane and seeks adventure, may God go with her.  She will succeed. 

Wait, she’s getting up!  Is she pursuing her dreams?  Is she inspired by Robinson and Friday?  Is she heading off to pack her bags? “I’ll have another latte, please,” said Miss D’Arcy shyly. “But could I have the new flavor?  I’m trying to branch out.” Well, everyone has to start somewhere.  For excitement, adventure, and action seekers across the globe, this has been Agent Bridget Donahue.