The rules are simple. Incorporate the following five words, or synonyms of them, in flash fiction or poetry.
Charcoal / Shade / Pale / Wake / Lucid
Here goes my second entry following the Tanka poetic structure.
Ace of Hearts
Hypnotic beats wake,
Emerald eyes captivate.
All becomes lucid –
Riveted by charcoal shades.
The fair draw of coming fate. Continue reading “The Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Challenge #175 – Take Two”
The rules are simple. Incorporate the following five words, or synonyms of them, in flash fiction or poetry.
Charcoal / Shade / Pale / Wake / Lucid
Welcome back to the DMV, me. Feeling fairly immersed in the ramifications of the current government shutdown, I jotted this guy down sometime late last night. Hope you enjoy.
Nonet
It’s in the shade cast by yet-to-be
Built walls – the pale horse’s terror.
Fear of change, fear of the other
Lucid cries for neither.
Walls made of burnt bonds.
Left with charcoal.
Power will
Wake Up
Soon
Continue reading “The Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Challenge #175 – Take One”
Woot. The Secret Keeper posted a new challenge on Monday. The key was to use Rough, Gate, Rag, Hip, and Wine in either flash fiction or a poem in a style of your choosing. I chose the Tanka.
Here’s my offering:
Doubt
Would I choose water
Over wine? A too rough truth
Over a smooth lie?
The gate to more is a red
Rag flown from a corpse’s hip.
Jessie Gutierrez
So the rules are simple. Write a poem or flash fiction and incorporate these five words:
SUN / BOOK / ACT / STAND / WAR
Because I’m a sucker for the style, I chose to follow the structure of a villanelle. Here goes my entry:
The Wolf Who Cried Continue reading “The Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Challenge #123”
The Family Dinner Party
Where the man
at the top of the stairs,
the butcher of our tiny land
came from, nobody will say.
Every family has one.
We gather together,
blood running down
the wooden steps
I meant to post this about a week ago, since NaNoWriMo is already 8 days expired. But the results for my personal version of it with short stories – NaShoStoWriMo – were good: I wound up writing 15 short stories and over 22,000 words. My goal had been 20 stories, so I fell short of that, but considering I started the month with a whooping zero short stories ever written, I’m very pleased with the challenge. It accomplished its goal, which was to inspire me to write short stories.
Holiday travel for Thanksgiving really put a monkey wrench into my writing schedule and I marveled at folks in the U.S. doing NaNoWriMo who were able to power through that crazy last week of November when so many of us are traveling or shopping or prepping or hosting or cooking.
Continue reading “Short Story Challenge – “First Day of Work” – Marcy Erb”
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!”
Evening Satellite Publishing 