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@athelstone have you looked at moving to a 21st century forum like discourse? I use it on talk.restarters.net and it’s pretty slick. You can get email notifications and reply by email; can upload pictures, has trust levels and you can restrict areas.
DoW problems: Usability just isn’t what it should be; not being able to post pictures is a pain; definitely doesn’t promote idle chat.
The wordcloud was very far from perfect, but had one significant difference: the course offerings meant new people were always joining, wondering wth was going on, some figuring it out or persisting without figuring it out – so there was a steady stream of course finishers wondering if they could keep learning or just chat idly with the old lags. So maybe can we persuade someone to create, or develop our own, course offerings? I don’t think the offerings would necessarily have to be astonishingly astonishing (although that would help) but they need to work as courses. I guess the point would be for us to show up in a search for e.g. ‘uk writing course’.
Drawing in new users (SEO): I can’t remember how I found the wordcloud, but I think it did involve ‘uk’ as one of the search terms because I’d glanced at US-based forums and they weren’t for me – want to avoid color/trunk/american-englishisms. I can find us if I include ‘denofwriters’ but that’s not really helpful to bring in newbies. So what else can we do to make ourselves googleable?
Blimey, managed to write something and very pleased to be able to enter the comp. Was a bit concerned at managing to get to 250 words and wanting to post without having to DQ myself! Happily at 256 words including title. 🙂
This might be the day.
He hadn’t closed the curtains. The sunbeam found the bed at 6.37 and warmed his left foot at 6.45. By 6.54 it was glowing citrus off the lemon and orange duvet cover.
The letterbox might click-clap
The front door is five metres away from where he lies, and his bedroom door is open, and the flat’s laminate floor and hard decor means every sound reverberates.
Still, no movement.
An envelope might flitter-sigh onto the floor
A bill; a circular; a glossy flyer – something arrives every day, but some weigh more than others.
7.11 and the sun has found his chest, searing a halo of pink and red in the hairs around his left and two minutes later his right nipple.
Bill might pick the envelope up and drop it by his bed, then lick his toes
If this happens then him not stirring isn’t unusual, although Bill’s doggy optimism doesn’t understand that.
The letter might have his name on it
This happens, but not recently, not with a return address on the back.
Could today be the day?
The sheet inside might read “Re: your test results…”
Imagine this letter; imagine it’s from Mr Andrews. Could it be?
At 7.15 his clavicles are incandescent, shade above them striking a cross-cut below his neck.
The text might continue “I’m glad to inform you …”
At 7.20 sun shines onto his lips, and then three minutes later into his unseeing eyes.
Somewhere, his waiting won’t ever end.
Really good, Daeds – and IMO we could all go out and respond publicly to your and Kaz’s FB posts with words to recognise how good this story is. Fantastic.
Captive No More
Immovable behind a wide table, the five children sat strangely motionless. From tallest on the right to smallest on the left, they patiently faced an audience seated on ten rows of scarlet-topped hotel ballroom chairs.
The tallest child spoke first. “My name is One,” he said quietly, but loud enough. “I am the oldest. I am fifteen years old. My life….” He paused.
An elderly man with astonishing white hair sat on another ballroom chair by the side of the room. He had nodded as One spoke, then sat still when One fell silent.
One continued, clearer now. “My first memories are of them-…” at this point his face crumpled, and he looked down and bit his lip, then sat up straight, and took a breath which refilled his sails and propelled him to speak again, “my parents- … of them shouting at me.”
No breath escaped the audience, neither was it taken; no rustling of clothes, no shuffling, no wringing of hands, no sniffing. They could have not been there, except for the impressions their plump buttocks made in the scarlet upholstery, the stench of their aftershave or eau de parfum, and their vile prurience.
The second tallest child’s eyes swivelled towards her elder brother, then away – far, far away – beyond the back wall of the ballroom where standing shadows watched, or occasionally turned to each other. Unlike those shadows she spoke loudly, with a tremor in her thirteen year old voice that betrayed anger invisible on her face. “I never ever heard our parents shout.” She looked around at One who still faced straight forwards. “They loved each other, One, and they loved us.” She looked forward, daring the audience to gainsay, and that audience sat lumpen, unmoving as a hill.
He had nodded as she spoke, and now the elderly man stopped as the girl stopped speaking.
Left of the girl, her younger brother shook his head once, and again more vigorously, making his straggly hair fall to obscure the riot in his eyes. It seemed that out of sight beneath the table he reached a hand out to his elder sister, and that she reached out to him, but neither betrayed their comfort from the contact.
The next smaller child – a boy, ten – stirred, and stated boldly, because this was his chance to claw his way out of purgatory, and he knew it, “I need fresh air after all my time underground.” He turned away from the others towards the youngest, looked down at the seven year old and held out his hand. “Please come with me, Five. You deserve this most.”
Five Ling took Four’s hand and together they stood and without looking back left their siblings, and that mute immobile audience, and the ballroom.
Heard through the closing door, Four’s young voice was effervescent with sunlight, blue sky, and cheeks tickled by the breeze. “Look, Five, look! Those are birds.”
The white-haired man nodded, then smiled his piranha smile.
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Yeah, the words are definitely countable, not necessarily within the aforementioned parameters.
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edited to add spaces between paragraphs.Memories, memories
Through a mane of blonde hair, through streaks of bleached and of darker dyed strands, her eyes flickered upwards. “Can I help you, sir?”
Behind me the door hissed shut expensively, hinges well greased by wills and probates. “Do yer know where Bryant Street is?”
“I umm… don’t know.” She bent her head back down to the screen below the reception counter, and her fingertips clicked keys. “Let me check.”
I knew she was lying, because I’d followed her here from there, from Bryant Street, since Monday, that’s three times.
“I’m looking for my daughter.”
She looked up, and seemed to be taking me in. “Your daughter?” Her eyes and face crinkled like they should do when you smile, but with all the warmth of a frosty park bench on a winter’s night. “You don’t look old enough, sir.”
“I started young.” Memories, memories. I shook my head to break that chain of thought. Mustn’t go there: if I remember too much, the tears’ll come back, and I don’t want to go back where they got me.
She looked down at her screen, perhaps she saw a glisten in the corner of my eyes. Or she was trying to work out what to do.
I threw a grenade. “Younger’n you.”
Her tippy-tappy typing stopped. The only sounds were from the street, filtering through the thick glass frontage: cars; a distant siren; a dog barked, once.
I threw another. “Yer probably about her age, yer know.”
Now she sat back, crossed her arms over her fancy blouse that was the same colour as the flowers on the counter, and faced me full on. “How old am I, do you think?”
I couldn’t help raising my voice. “And yer live on Bryant Street, I seen yer there.”
She picked up the phone and started dialling, so I reached over the reception desk and grabbed the handset. It dropped with a clatter on the desk and she pushed her chair back.
Now when she looked at me her eyes were wide. “Get out of here. The security guard-”
“Why’d yer think I was lost?”
“You look… most people who come in here wear suits.”
I made a show of looking around at the empty leather seats. Lawyers can afford suits and fancy furniture, the prices they charge. “Can’t see none.”
When I looked back at her she was reaching towards her desk, to the side.
“No yer don’t. Stay away fer that button. All I want is to talk to yer.”
Now her eyes were glistening, but she stood up. Nearly as tall as me. And not afraid. Like a lioness, with that mane of hair. Like…
“God, yer look like yer ma. I’m yer da.”
“I worked that out, Sherlock.”
“So why’d yer try to call the police and press that thing?”
“You took me by surprise. I’d forgotten what a bastard mum said you were. She was right.”
It was almost a snarl.
Then she slammed the button.
“And you stink.”
(I edited trying to add some gap between the last line and the word count. Fail.)
500 words on the .
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@Squidge – I think you meant to thank @madiguana, the Admin who is custodian of the Den’s twitter channel 🙂
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This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by .
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Yes a space for a mini CV would be nice.
Also, my browser tab for Den Of Writers has a blank icon – it’s called a favicon there are instructions for how to set it here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4888377/how-to-add-a-browser-tab-icon-favicon-for-a-website – simplest method is to get the icon perhaps as a PNG file, rename the file to favicon.ico and put it in the root folder of the webserver filespace
Totally barking, Ath, but very very well done!
MPO is that if the cloud goes then all communication with participants goes too and you aren’t responsible for that. Attempting to continue with a subset wouldn’t be the same competition, would it?
Hi Laure. please forgive me if I sound silly aking this question, but should I know you from the Word Cloud?
I would like to like this post of yours, but a) the editor has reverted to the HTML one which doesn’t seem to let me @ you, and b) there isn’t a like bitton/icon/link.
So I’ll just have to say: I like your post!
Hi John! Welcome. Have a cup of coffee, or two. The barista will do those fancy patterns in the foam if you ask him nicely.
If it isn’t a cpanel option then it’s definitely a webserver option to automatically redirect http to https – definitely worth doing
TinyMCE would be a better option, IMO. It allows switching to HTML mode if you want to but defaults to WYSIWIG.
Yes. Would be nice if Activity was the default view, rather than getting a rather blank page and having to click Activity every time.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by