@jd73
Active 6 years, 2 months agoForum Replies Created
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I’ve always sent quick responses, even for rejects (“Thank you for yor time”, etc) – I think it’s out of habit, I guess, though nobody’s complained – yet 🙂
Seed Cathedral
It was not the first of its kind but it was the one which marked the moment past which things would not return. There were too many and they were too popular. And tomorrow was my day. Today was Alfie’s – my brother.
“We who hold our rockets,” said the priest, garbed in a sheet in the roofless shadow of the abbey, “sit together and dream of better days.”
Alfie had been excited as I imagined he would be, but I knew the truth. Why else would the priests remain safely on the ground while the rest of us got strapped to a piece of ordnance before being blasted a couple of thousand feet up and blown to smithereens, returning to the earth only as ash and fertiliser? As it should be. As it was written.
Because he was in on it, that’s why. He was the reason. Anyway, there we sat amid the ruins, whose grounds were well on their way to rewilding heaven. The atmosphere was pastoral, one you’d expect at a village fete or any other fun day out. Cake stalls and donkey-rides. And the periodic whizz-whizz of the rockets.
The fuse was lit. The priest read from his little book. For one moment he stopped in front of Alfie and seemed to be blessing him with a brace of smouldering herbs. Then that was it. Whoosh-bang. Alfie rendered a streak against the blue-grey sky. Behind me, a carousel commenced its garish whirl to a lurching river of organ music. Jugglers juggled. A cheery pie-seller broadcast her wares. And so it went, until the next day.
I would not go.
Did the priest sneak a look at me just then? Did he know? His bushy eyebrows hid a terrible secret and a pair of knowing eyes.
That morning, I had decided. We who hold our rockets, choose not to embark upon this state-mandated bottom-up thinning of the herd. So what if the earth is way past capacity? I will not go. There is a better way. I who hold my rocket will tilt it from the sky and at the robed figure whose hooked nose rarely ever leaves his book.
I will not go. As acolytes light my fuse – the sparking cord surprisingly heat-free – I learn that the rockets are immovable. I, whom my rocket holds, see my spark nearing its sputtering end. I will not go.
#399w
OK so the message is: do those things now and you won’t regret having missed out later. It’s clearer with the preceding line, I think. Pretty snappy line imo 🙂
Document
(content warning)Bringing a gun into a house changes it
Sliding a small skirting board piece to one side
You couldn’t secrete barely a few shells between
A pipe and this weird angular thing that you recall
Has something to do with home repair
For the un-betooled.Planking pulls up with relative ease. In they go
Force in a cloth, deaden the sounds. No-one will see
They’ll never again throw rocks at your head when they call you names
Tremble and pray is what they’ll do
When you come by‘Cos all that you want, all that you need, from day to day,
Is love and respect (Aretha would say) – prove that you’re wrong
If ever they knock somebody down, you’ll push them back
So keep on about the punitive ways the world can be
You tried to be good, you tried to be good
You failed again.Face doesn’t fit? You’re a little bit dim? Good luck to you.
You padded the bag with jackets and books, student stuff.
The person who said that God is Love has lied to us.
You crossed the street, you crossed a line.
The rest we know.Bringing a bag into a school changes you.
#200w
No, to me it means don’t beat yourself up over missed opportunities. I like it, actually, that sentiment. With so much pressure to achieve, to do, to be fortunate and so on, if you don’t, it’s easy to feel very guilty, and who wants that? 🙂
Ooh, and it pans musically too and isn’t too tongue twisty either. Is this a song you are planning to sing?
Nice work Sandra – congratulations 🙂 Stunning entries all round – might have to rewrite my WIP opening again!
And do any of you find that sometimes, you change something, only to change it back again?
Bah! Editing? My text comes out publisher-ready, no rewrites.
OK, total-lying mode switched off now 🙂 Yes, I change it, change it back, forget why I wanted to change it in the first place, then forget entirely what the whole fracas was about or what I was aiming for, until some time later when I reread it and change it again to what I had initially updated it to. Frankly there’s no rhyme or reason to it other than seemingly what mood I happen to be in until, if I eventually hate it less one way than I do another, then it stays like that til beta phase, at which point it becomes clear that after all that, the new text is simply a repeat from something further up the page. But as long as I have some sort of handle on the process, i.e. knowing what mindset I write best in and arranging my life to maximise that, things do stabilise somewhat in the end.
I know it’s always a tricky one, but what is the definition of positive commentary? Is constructive crit within that purview? What do we want to allow? I ask because in some instances it could be useful to see where a piece went wrong, though of course then again some entrants might not be seeking any kind of feedback. Going back to the point about how we’re probably not going to be swayed by others’ comments here, by the same token do we assume a reasonable degree of robustness when it comes to accepting suggestions from others here, and ditto with there being an assumed level of sensitivity when writing such responses. Personally I regard highly the knowledge, the experience, and the sensibility of people here and feel it could be really useful (no obligations of course!) if someone said, for eg., “this piece is well-written, though you take a little while to get to the inciting incident” or what-have-you. It seems kind of a shame not to use that considerable body of skill. Just a thought anyway, and I totally understand if people would rather not. Maybe there can be a little optional sub-caveat down the bottom that says “will accept any comment” or something.
^ I agree with that Jane. And to keep entries clearer, maybe put something like
ENTRY
at the top if you are posting a story. Or comment as a reply to an entry, and let the forum software handle the nesting of replies (testing that here to see if it does indeed do that!). I like the idea of comments being right in alongside with the stories as it is less messy in my view.
EDIT: It doesn’t do that 🙂
Thanks Richard. I like that “I wrote it like that because I like it like that. And screw you.” I fully support the misuse of craft in the name of creation. I wrote a piece that was full of (intentional) spelling mistakes, probably because I’d recently read The Gallows Pole and I liked the way it conveys voice and place via imperfection, and was striving for something vaguely similar. Will be interesting to see the feedback on it.
Regarding this point:
this would seem to suggest that all the stuff he mentions in the first para, all the work we do to improve our writing, all the hanging out we do in places like the Den and, yes, Jericho Wtiters too, is a waste of time.
I’ve not seen the writeup so I don’t know if there’s any more? Is there a link to it or is it members-only? If that’s the whole of it, then to me it’s honestly a bit of a whine but if there’s more – and if it aligns with what I think – then maybe doing only the above might be what results in a case of universal workshop style. Question: what’s missing?
I would venture: voice, personality, uniqueness. I can’t point to any particular example of something that has been bleached with too much workshopping because I don’t happen to have anything in front of me, but I wonder if only sticking to workshop guidelines could tend to yield that kind of style. But personality’s a hard thing to measure, much less deliver in a one-hour class and knock out in an afternoon’s writing. It’s built up over the yonks. That, to me, is why this craft is kind of a soul-searching exercise as much as a simple function of time and effort. Putting yourself to the page like that, expunging your own inner stuff via your characters or narration or what-have-you, is in my view what gives a piece its own special flavour. A blog on that would be very interesting.
Then of course there’s the social apsect of writing sites, which give you encouragement, community, friends. And with that being free of charge as we know, it’s nonetheless worth a very great deal, as I see it.
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. Reason: Hah I just pretty much repeat what you say in the post right before mine!
Okeydoke we got there in the end, it looks like. Thank you all for your stories (and screenplay) – I enjoyed reading them all. However one winner it has always been and one winner it will be tonight and that winner, for the enchanting voice, the sinister — yet strangely beautiful — turns of phrase, and the macabre subtlety of it all, from the title on, must be Raine with ‘Aconite and forget-me-not’
Well done all, thank you for taking part, and happy writing 🙂
Hi everyone, I’ve read the stories in the Feb/Mar/Apr comp – thank you all for those. Now, I’m not totally clear if people are planning to send me their favourites for me to add up, or if I’m to do it the usual way (where deciding a winner is solely up to me), so I will leave it for a while – til later this afternoon, maybe – and then I’ll go with what I have, whether that’s just my own score or a collection of others. Anyway, speak later! 🙂
This all sounds good, though I’m not entirely sure how the peer judging would work. Would everyone send scores to the setter, or just people who have volunteered to judge, or some other subgroup?
Yep happy to judge April’s if people are ok with the prompts (or I can add more, or change, etc). Sorry, I’ve been rubbish here recently 🙂
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.
- 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
The Blackest Cat in the Longest Night
That twenty-first, that longest night, much darker than before
I dragged my sorry soul up from the bench and through the door
‘Cross the gutters I did step, my footing slick and icy.
When something tried to trip me up! I stared; what did my eyes see?A cat! – the cat, the blackest cat, a rat-tail in its snapper
Two em’rald gems, dual lambent slits, the markings of a trapper
So black this cat presented that it would not be a tall
Story to confess to you it was not there at all.The direst cat, the dirty cat, and if I set my eyes
On another like it, that would be a great surprise.
It was not there; that horror-cat, that Schrödinger’s monstrosity
Living and not-living – turning cheerfulness to paucity.All thoughts of Yuletide happiness did flee before its claws
I knew myself a quarry, captured fast among its jaws
Yet even now I cannot think that shadow-cat was real
Aside from the bleak terror and dismay it made me feelDesire I not, to see that cat, nor feel that way again
Should I make it through to Christmas Day, or to year’s end
That longest night, that blackest night, the season’s perigee
And its malignant death-cat dwelleth in my memory.~212 excl.
Happy December 1st Denizens! I have to admit I spent some of November going “They hate me! I’ve ruined the comp (again) with my over-restrictive prompts!” but these stories show me very much otherwise, so thank you. Anyway – comments & results incoming…
Tony Lyttle
Untitled
A short, fractured little piece that I interpreted as being – somewhat autobiographical? It certainly chimed, and I love the repeating infinite loop nature of it, much like what scribbling across the surface of the klein bottle would be like. In that regard you caught the reason I included that in the prompt. I was hooked straight in by the notion of writers block but being unable to stop. It sounds weird. It is weird, and that caught me in. Yes, it’s brief, and it would have been interesting to see what you might have done with the extra words, but it works nonetheless.Seagreen
Untitled
Again, you have turned the prompt – the shapes behind the eyelids – into exactly something I wanted it to be. I loved this line: “To find out that the only colour behind my eyelids was grey and I was looking into shadows.” And the opening got straight to the thing of note, of not knowing where we are. It’s quite a strange tale, and very well-described, and the contrast between the missing arm and the “It’s beautiful!” absolutely works for me. I’m wondering what the devil’s happened to your narrator. Has she meditated herself into oblivion?John S. Alty
“Editing”
I see that you took a punt on the six accountants, and Luigi’s got a point: a play about six accountants is going to be a niche thing. I enjoyed the back and forth between the characters, and the way it all develops like the actual writing process – start with something, watch it evolve into something new, then edit the heck out of it. I did check to see whether there were six characters. And there were, in a way – Luigi, his agent, Maria, the auditor, the friend, and the author, which I thought was a rather neat little puzzle to be unravelled. May be just my reading of it though. Oh – “daffodils nodded in warm breezes” shows the passage of seasons beautifully, though it didn’t half make me wish for spring. 🙂Raine
“The Flower And The Bee”
Took me a couple of reads to get a feel for it. To me, it seems to chronicle someone slipping away – the refrains of “Remember this” and “this is just the start” are less like instructions and more like pleas and acts of denial, and with this in mind, and contrasted with the simple implicit bond of the gap between bee and flower, it cuts deep. They are what hooked me in. “This is Venus raining diamonds above the black horizon in a damson sky. “; “They are each a starfall and a broken bone.”; I don’t really know what to say about some of the imagery you used, and the voice you did it in, other than that they are beautiful, hurtful things. Sublime and inspiring.Daedalus
“Stairway”
First sentence and I am in. This suggestion was prompted by an article I read about the Winchester House, where passages and doors and staircases lead every which way, or no way at all. A church works even better; what child sees a mysterious through-way and doesn’t want to explore. I loved the detail in your entry – the history, the saints, Anubis, demonism, all evoked with pointillised precision and underscoring an increasing tension. I get the sense that there is something darker here, something that is not being said, a feeling of past trauma that is quickly swept away, leaving confusion and a hole.Xander Michael
“Home”
For some reason, I get a sense of ending right from the start here if that makes sense. There’s a sadness throughout. Where does that come from? “It had always been a struggle”, I suppose. It sets the tone and we just know it’s not going to go well. I loved this line, “He was endless sky, cool air and drastic changes in light” and the contrast between that and the overpowering humidity of KL was very sensory and real. For some reason when I chose this prompt I had a sudden urge to go to some nice neighbourghood in KL, just to see, and you took me there well, so thank you. Oh – I thought at first that Kristjan had a heart attack! If not, it was certainly intense.Great reads all round guys but I’m going to have to give it to Raine with The Flower And The Bee. Your metaphors were brilliant, and the voice and the repetitions produced poetry. I don’t know why I sound surprised. I’m not suprised. I know this is what your writing is like.
Once more, thank you all for your entries. On a day like today, when the weather is ghastly and grey, I have read well. Raine, over to you 🙂
Guys, it’s dawned on me that not only have I set a ~bit~ of a demanding comp here, but I’ve gone and done it while everyone’s at Nano! 🙂 Would you like me to change it to something easier/shorter/more fun while we have a bit of time – would that be ok – or shall I leave as is?
Wow. Gobsmacked. I wasn’t expecting this. It’s a change from the crack of regular rejections I’ve been getting used to, so thank you Seagreen! Great entries all 🙂
I’ll set another prompt shortly. Just … got to come up with something.
For me, “Tasha and she” would flow better as “She and Tasha”. But apart from this I thought it was a very neat story. I particularly liked the moment where she and Jezza are in bed and then suddenly it switches to a physics metaphor. Also when she changes, it’s good to see it from her perspecive, with the beast being an outside entity at first.
One thing: larger and skewered lamb -> Do you mean “lager”?
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