Tag: theme

January’s Theme: Vino y Sangre

On By Jessie GutierrezIn Schizophrenic Poetry Challenge, Writers - Jessie2 Comments

Wine is traditionally symbolic of socially constructed things: celebrations and ceremonies, class and culture, elegance in communication and conversation. It’s an art with finesse and attention to detail, and when done right, holds complexity and character in every sip. Wine is classic.

Blood, meanwhile, is all about power. It rushes and demands all of its own volition; there is nothing made but what it makes. It’s aggression and passion and force and instinct and it pushes you to work its will. It’s all emotion and best felt when its owner is out of control. Blood is fierce. Continue reading “January’s Theme: Vino y Sangre” →

December’s Theme: Tracking Mud through the House

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Schizophrenic Poetry Challenge, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving/weekend. I spent much of my long weekend in the mountains, where we had temperatures from bitter cold to chilly-but-nice. That’s the Appalachians for you. My mini vacation gave me some inspiration for our next monthly theme, but we’ll get to that.

November featured our regular contributors again, with a galumphing theme which carried the symbolic depth I had hoped it would. Continue reading “December’s Theme: Tracking Mud through the House” →

NaShoStoWriMo Week 2 Complete – with unexpected word count!

On By Marcy ErbIn On Storytelling, Writers - Marcy Erb3 Comments

Well, week two of NaShoStoWriMo (my version of NaNoWriMo, but with short stories) is complete and I met my goal. I have 10 short stories written so far. Because a lot of NaNoWriMo revolves around word count, I felt compelled to tally up my word count so far for the 10 stories and…wait for it…16,438 words! Holy Toledo! I really didn’t expect it to be that high already. Some of my stories are under 1000 words, but most are in the 1000 – 2500 word range. One behemoth is 3200 words.

Continue reading “NaShoStoWriMo Week 2 Complete – with unexpected word count!” →

November Theme: Galumphing Returns!

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Schizophrenic Poetry Challenge, Writers - Steve D'Adamo1 Comment

So kind of a dead month for the October poetry theme, huh? After rolling through various themes with a few submissions each, October featured a grand total of two submissions for the charity theme. Maybe I’ll just have to start spamming all of your message boards with poetry requests!

Or maybe the theme just wasn’t all that interesting, which is understandable, considering the last time we featured a non-sins/virtues theme was way back in June. (I agree, the charity theme was a bit lackluster, but do yourself a favor and go back and read through some of those previous sins/virtues poems from our writers. There were a lot of fascinating submissions.) Continue reading “November Theme: Galumphing Returns!” →

Theme for October – the Virtue of Giving

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Schizophrenic Poetry Challenge, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

Okay, so I realize that I promised to get this up yesterday, and that totally did not happen. But at least we have a whole month to write these poems! Oh right, unless you read my post on Tuesday, you probably don’t know that Schizophrenic Summers is changing to a month-long submission period.

Our last round of poems featured chastity as the theme, and produced one poem about holding women to certain standards (ideals?) and one about holding love to no standards at all.

Theme: Charity

Structure: Free verse Continue reading “Theme for October – the Virtue of Giving” →

Theme for August 26, 2014: Cruel to be Kind in the Right Measure

On By Jessie GutierrezIn Schizophrenic Poetry Challenge, Writers - JessieLeave a comment

“We dig up diamonds by the score; A thousand rubies, sometimes more; But we don’t know what we dig ’em for; We dig dig dig a-dig dig…” Diligence in the digging of dwarfs. I think I saw Snow White for the first time when I was about seven and this catchy song was stuck in my head for days afterward. It took awhile to really appreciate how much work this virtue actually is, be it in the try, try again perseverance it necessitates or in the acceptance of its time consuming nature and perhaps fruitless outcome. But for now, on to the next one: Continue reading “Theme for August 26, 2014: Cruel to be Kind in the Right Measure” →