Writing Exercise: Word of the Day: Panspermia

The lens is part of a series of lenses which I am making for writers, which I call: The Word of the Day Writing Exercise Series.

The goal of this series is to pick a new word each day, and use it to brainstorm ideas for a new story to write about.

This is the first lens in the series and I have no idea how many lenses I will end up building, or how often I will build new ones, but watch for more Word of The Day lenses, and most of all: Have fun!

Writing Exercise: Word of the Day: Panspermia 

Writing exercises come in many forms. Basically anything that can inspire you to write a story, can become a writing exercise. Well, today I came across a word which I had never heard before: Panspermia. I looked at that word and thought: "What the hell?" It wasn't used in a sentence so I had no way to figure out it's meaning. It was part of a True or False quiz, which asked what the meaning of Panspermia was. Of course never hearing the word before, I had no idea what the answer was, so I guessed "False". Turns out I guessed correctly, but still didn't know the true meaning of the word, so it was off to the dictionary for me. Here is what I found:

Panspermia: noun

Theory that life on earth originated from organisms coming from outer space. According to this theory, the seeds of life were scattered to Earth but could have been distributed to other parts of the universe as well.

Write a story using the word Panspermia as your inspiration. It could be about the begining of life on earth, a sort of creation story, a court room drama about a scientist forced to defend his theory, the discovery of proof, even a fan-fic piece about Fox Mulder! Be imaginative, be creative, but most of all have fun!

~~EK

This article Copyright 2007 Wendy C. Allen