Just a few days left for the Monthly Competition. Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Just a few days left for the Monthly Competition. Hurry, hurry, hurry!
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January 2019

About Forums Den of Writers Monthly Competition January 2019

Viewing 10 posts - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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    Posts
  • #3743
    John S Alty
    Participant

    OK, everyone, we’ll make this short and sweet because the RWAV competition is reaching its finale this month and many will be busy with that.
    It’s a new year so the theme is “Looking Ahead” and you have to do it with a mere 200 words.
    Good luck!

    #3750
    Daedalus
    Participant

    Good topic John. Will DEFINITELY enter this one (and apols to Raine whose comp I failed to contribute to)

    #4041
    Jonathan
    Participant

      You Write Like Leo Tolstoy, I Write Like Leo Tolstoy

    We all write like Leo Tolstoy. Some of us even like to write like Leo Tolstoy; we tinsel trickling-brook sentences with the most fragile leaflike imagery, drape our select pink-petal verbs over everything – our verdigris mountains kneeling to our yellow-nugget suns – until soon, and before we can get up any kind of editorial dam, our prose rages, it torrents down the sides of this creative topography, gathering speed, picking up adverbs and metaphors like a glacier collects moraines, dodging – we trust – round those worn-away rocky outcrops up ahead and then we dump, oh, do we dump because we are not done, oh, no, we are not done with the silty effluent of our overworked prose that builds up into an impenetrable barrier, unseen ‘til it is too late, cutting off oxbow passages, beaching out the flat-bottoms of those who would correct our course, redirecting our vision into something that suggests a goalless meander, but look; look at the broad open valley we have cut from the voiceless wastes, the colourless prairie, look at what our leisure hath wrought, all because we write like Leo Tolstoy.

    But no longer. Tomorrow – tomorrow I shall write like Raymond Chandler.

    # 197w, inspired by the questionable output of iwritelike.com

    #4045
    Libby
    Participant

    Future Sound

    On the doorstep in the dark, with a glass of wine. At other times when doing this duty she’d drunk coffee. It didn’t matter, just something to nudge along the twenty minutes which might be slow if there was nothing to report.

    She looked out to the lane where bare, rounded oaks stood under a sky that was clear to the stars, and no wind blew across the fields. Beyond the immediate silence, a mile away, the dual carriageway purred – lorries and cars hidden behind the hill.

    Hoo-oo-ooo. A tawny owl. Success. A call to send to the survey, to add to the
    records from everyone else who stood around like this in the dark. Something wild turned into data, into a picture – dots on the map – of tawnies: where they were and, by extrapolation, how they were coping. If action were needed it should be taken. Conservation.

    She sipped wine and watched the oaks where the call had come from. Digital information, tangible life. Tawnies, whose pellets were like ossuaries. One day she’d be ashes and dust. Not a morbid thought, really, as long as other people would hear the owls.

    194 words including title

    #4158
    Daedalus
    Participant

    Ahead

    I cannot look ahead.

    There is no ahead. There is only now, and I can’t handle it. He is tearing up the carpet. Chomping the furniture. Treating my arm as a chew toy.

    And he’s there. Always. Always having to be watched. Placated. Fed. I am tiptoeing around the edge of my own life. If I slip I will fall off.

    Virtually the only place that’s out of his reach is the attic. He takes the corner off the coffee table that was my wife’s grandmother’s. Tears up the plush zebra from the first time we went to the zoo. He is eating our past, having finished the present. Three months old and he can reach the table. Four months, the kitchen surfaces. Nothing below waist height remains unlicked

    Whack whack whack of his tail against the door frame as he comes into my study. The warmth of him as he hops onto the sofa and lays his head carefully on my thigh. How his eyes lock on yours as you enter the room. How he sits like an unassembled heap of random limbs. The most beautiful puppy. I cannot look ahead – I never want this to end.

    198 words

    #4161
    John S Alty
    Participant

    Well done to the three of you! I’ll give these tales due consideration during the day and post the result by this evening.

    #4178
    John S Alty
    Participant

    The results are in!

    Jonathan: A really clever piece of writing, wry observation. Excellent.

    Libby: A pleasing little tale, well written and with a message. Good job.

    Daedalus: Hugely enjoyable and accomplished description of life with a new puppy and the utter contentment that comes with its unreserved adoration. Liked it a lot.

    So, eenie, meenie, minie, mo: Jonathan is the winner.

    #4184
    Daedalus
    Participant

    Brilliant – thanks John and well done Jonathan, a tour-de-force of purple prose

    #4193
    Libby
    Participant

    Thank you @johnalty and well deserved Jonathan @jd73. As Daeds said, a tour de force. I really enjoyed both your piece and his.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Libby.
    #4200
    Jonathan
    Participant

    Zoiks! Thanks John, and thanks for hosting and feeding back, and likewise to Libby and Daeds 🙂 I’m glad you liked my little writeup. I tried that site and thought it was going to make flattering comps as to my writing style but I think it has about 4 authors we supposedly write like. Anyway I’ll have a think about the Feb comp and get something up today.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Jonathan.
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