Barny

Thank you for  helping out  here  Janette, and  thank for  choosing  my  offereing as  winner. I felt  all the  entries   captured  Ath’s remit for this  March  madness  comp so well done  Jill, Sandra,Libby and Sea.

The  April  comp   challenge   will be posted  shortly .

Simple, I thought – judge a few stories for the March competition while Ath is out of action (Ath, if you’re reading this, sending BIG healing vibes and willing a speedy recovery). But – what a dilemma to be handed. These are all excellent and worthy to be winners in their own right.

But judge I must, as promised, so here are my thoughts:

Jill -…[Read more]

Thank you, Janette!

That’s a great shame. All best wishes to Ath.

How about finding another judge?

Could anyone else reading this be willing to judge the comp? Five delightful entries. Then the winner can set the April comp.

Damn! It messed with my formatting 🙁

The madness is all mine for thinking I could do this!

All words taken from Rod Judkins’ The Art of Creative Thinking.

DRIBBLES AND SPATTERS

Inner demons

chisel

creative confidence

Ideas so strange

wither.

Radiate defiance

Salvage mistakes with freedom

and

transform the message

Come alive!

Running

499 words

My sister’s boyfriend dumped her so she booked a day at a willow-weaving workshop – in the countryside, calming and therapeutic. She’d make a sculpture of a hare though she’d never seen one in real life. Ironic, I thought, as she’d never seen herself either.

I admit the dumping had been nasty. Sis waiting to meet the…[Read more]

You asked for mad?  Well, here’s the  slice of crackpot absurdity I came up with .

The necklace of tiny silver bells about her neck tinkled softly as she backed against the garden wall. ‘You’re all mad, you know,’ she muttered holding the sharp seed dibber, labelled ‘Mr Pointy’, like a knife at the advancing crowd.

At the front of the group,…[Read more]

Thank you for such a satisfactory February topic, Libby, and for your generous appraisal! I loved the other two entries; they could easily have won.

The February comp has drawn a delightful selection of stories.

@jillsted Jill, you do an evocative encapsulation of Isabel’s memories of different kinds of love. Her memories are compelling, a sense of her moving through a full life. The ending has a twist, if I’ve read it correctly, that adds a shiver to the story, a question of whether Lydia’s…[Read more]

Teabreak in love

Maureen Chapman. No, tell a lie, it was Chaplain, like a vicar. Her name, I mean—she wasn’t like a vicar. Anyway, Maureen Chaplain was perfect from my ten-year-old point of view. But I’m getting all jumbled up about how to start, so I’ll take a breath. See, it really began when the Brazells moved out from next door and the Cha…[Read more]

A reminder of the monthly comp, as we’re over half way through February already.

Here’s the original post:

As it’s February the theme this month is love. It needn’t be romantic. It can be of any sort – for a place, a piece of music, an animal – whatever you like that that provokes a feeling of love.

Max 400 words, deadline midnight Saturda…[Read more]

Terrie, I had a tricky January but that’s no excuse. Sorry for missing a super monthly comp. Well done Libby, a really great entry. Well done all.