Today's quizzes are inspired by one of the other realizations I had whilst at my college reunion: I used to wander the campus and my dorm, often late at night, finding spaces that offered new perspectives or insight into what a character might feel or experience. I'd stand under pine trees and look up at the sky through their branches. I'd climb a narrow staircase leading to a locked ceiling hatch and curl up as close to the top as I could get. I'd sit in a garden in misting rain and watch the water glaze the leaves.

I'd remembered how much attention I paid to sensory experiences in those years, but I didn't remember how avidly I'd explored, how easily those sensory experiences followed on the heels of those explorations. These days, I rarely wander at all. Partly because I'm not on a campus full of gardens and trees and filled with old dorms and their strange nooks and crannies, but mostly because I forgot how important that was to my creative life. Not just the seeing of new spaces, but the seeking of them, the sense of ownership you feel when you walk the spaces around you and find ways you, uniquely, fit inside them.

This week is filled with house projects and various tasks, including posting these quizzes each day, but once I've resumed my usual workday routine, I'm going to start walking and exploring my neighborhood again. That is a piece of my college self I intend to reclaim.

As for today's quizzes, perhaps I'm the only one who will feel the connection to creativity, characters, and spaces made one's own, but that was what I was aiming for when I chose them. ( Enjoy! )