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My friends and I occasionally engage in a form of madness known as Penkwe. The name “penkwe” is the reconstructed proto-Indo-European root word meaning “five.” This name refers to the extreme fiveness of the practice, in ways that will become apparent below.

I cannot tell you where this…let’s call it a “game”…comes from. It came to me from a dear friend of a dear friend, but if you can enlighten as to the origin or history of this particular form, please let me know.

But I can tell you what it is, at least as we play it. In the game of Penkwe, five people write five things each, using each time a given list of five words. The written pieces can be any piece of creative writing, either poetry or prose. Each can be a novella, a sonnet, a limerick, a haiku (if you happened to get five rather short words, a recipie, a catalog entry, a travel brochure, a short story, a eulogy, or indeed any of 308,358,830 other genres and forms.

It goes like this: There are five players and five rounds. In each round, one of the five players presents to the others a list of five words. They (all five people) then all have two weeks to produce a piece of writing using these five words, and distribute it to the others. So through the course of five rounds a total of twenty-five written works are produced.

Order of play: I recommend a random method of determining the sequence in which people serve as the word-giver.

Word rules: the words must be English, and cannot be proper nouns.

Variations: standard inflections of the word are permissible. So if you are given the word “perambulate” then you can use “perambulated” or “perambulates.” Other derived words do not count. Pushing a “perambulator” would not be kosher here. You could use the word of course, but would still be required to include a “legal” form as well.

Timeliness: This rule sounds harsh, but seems to be necessary in order to keep things going. If any player misses a deadline (does not turn in a piece of writing at the end of a two week round, or fails to give out a list of five words when it is their turn to do so at the beginning of a round), the game ends. Everyone can then decide if they want to restart, or if they instead want to stagger home, muttering about Boetian mooncalves and stinky cheese.

Optional Elements: It is considered polite for everyone to give some feedback on each piece, whether a full-scale critique or a brief comment. It can be fun to put all of the pieces into a nice anthology volume at the end, or perhaps to put them into a little Web site. One could even use blogging software to host the entries in the course of play, and use the blog engine’s comment functionality to record feedback right with the works themselves.

That’s basically it. A fun game, a way to unstick gummed-up writing gears with a low-pressure assignment, or an excuse to write bad poems; Penkwe can serve any or all of these roles.

Should you do it? Of course you should. You know you want to. Should I start one now? Hah. As though any of us have time. Still, it needn’t take up too much time…