This is a fun exercise to do, if your muse has been slobing around and not giving you the inspiration or drive you need. It makes you keep your mind focused as you write, and still allows you to deviate as much as you desire.

Your task is;
Write 200 words, and
Avoid the letter E
Share!

The letter E is the most used letter in the English alphabet, but there are plenty of words that don’t use it. Don’t cheat by using abbreviations, like Mr or Mrs, but you can use a thesaurus to see if you can get the word with an e-less spelling. I suggest you use the ‘search’ tool on your word processor before you share – you might be surprised at how many of the buggers slip in!

This is my example of a lipogram;

A dog wags its tail and you know that it’s happy. It’s not difficult to twig, a fact most of us know from birth. It is much thorny-a-thing to distinguish joy, or lack of it, in a human. What gain might follow, if our coccyx could again flag our glad moods or lash our irritations? A swift look down would grant us a hint of our companion’s thoughts: a lazy flick for dismissal; a swish of satisfaction; a low immobility of gloom –all told in a winding standard at our backs. With a tail, confusion and falling-outs would diminish though not vanish wholly. How could it, as our traits as a group is so pugnacious? A trick of a god or an additional trial for us to fail, its crisis too ambiguous and abnormal for our logic to fathom. Though without tails, humans still boast windows to our inmost thoughts – our brows may drop in angst or lift in shock; our lips may twitch and grin with laughing; our hands may play and twist with worry, and additional aids also. I am thankful for that, don’t think I’m not, but still I fancy a lissom proclamation to flourish out at my back.

Now, if you think that was hard, Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a whole novel (over 50,000 words!) without touching the E key in February, 1939. It is approaching its 70th birthday, so I thought it should be honoured with our toasting it. If you fancy taking a look at the novel in question, it can be found here.