Six Words
“Narrative” is holding a contest for a six-word story. They had this to say about the form.
“William Faulkner famously said that a novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet. Hemingway, with his creation of the six-word story, combined poetry and drama into a short form that has grown in popularity while remaining difficult to achieve.”
If you would like to participate, here’s the link: http://www.narrativemagazine.com/node/83577.
Salinger’s “Nine Stories”
I finished reading J.D. Salinger’s “Nine Stories.” Each one is unique and offers interesting characters and situations.
I especially love it when fiction refers to poetry. Robert Stone does this in “Bear and His Daughter” with the short stories “Porque no Tiene, Porque le Falta” and “Bear and His Daughter.” For some reason it amuses me.
And so it is with “Nine Stories.” In “Teddy,” Teddy says, “Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions” (282). And of artists in general in “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period”: “The worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly. However, this is not a tragic situation, in my opinion” (245).
Prompt–Sunday, August 7
Think of a memory from childhood. Write something using an element from it, like an image, phrase, or situation.
When I was a kid my siblings and I invented a game where we would swing in the backyard and see who could throw their shoe the farthest.
Our toes met the sky
as our shoes landed on grass.
Lapping Blood
We meet the brooding vampires first. Think about it. Sookie Stackhouse series—Bill. Interview with the Vampire—Louis. Buffy the Vampire Slayer—Angel. Twilight—Edward. Is there a vampire story with the non-brooding vampire introduced first?
Don’t get me wrong. I love vampire stories. I’m not a zombie fan or up for werewolves often, but I’ve read all of the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, all of the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, read Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, and I’m watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. I’m in season two. Other vampire books have made it on the Books Read list. I even took a vampire seminar for heaven’s sake (pun intended).
So the stories where we meet the nasty vampire first? Dracula—Bram Stoker. Carmilla-Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The Vampyre—John Polidori.
Acceptance!
Tuesday afternoon I received an acceptance letter for two of my poems to be published in the October issue of “Heavy Hands Ink.”
I am very excited to share these poems!
Here is the link to the website if you want to check out the magazine before then: http://heavyhandsink.wordpress.com/
Prompt—Thursday, August 4
Take the dialogue “If you don’t like chocolate you’re a communist” and write a poem or short story or what have you, just use the line. Here is mine:
She had fondue and other fixings for the engagement party and introduced us to her foreign sweetheart. Jack, our friend since grade school, commented on her fiancé’s lack of interest in the chocolate. “If you don’t like chocolate you’re a communist.” The fiancé responded, “Since you haven’t touched the apples you, sir, aren’t American.”
Prompt–Sunday, July 31
One character gets three books from the library. The driver says, “You read the weirdest books.” What is the character’s response? What happens next?
My example as a prose poem:
One day I went to the library and with my books in tow the driver says, “You read the weirdest books.” I look to him and say, “Technically I haven’t read them yet.”
Prompts
Sometimes I was stumped when I sat down to write—when I started writing seriously. So I turned to prompts for help. I used books like “The Writer’s Book of Matches” by the staff of Fresh Boiled Peanuts and “The Write Brain Workbook” by Bonnie Neubauer, as well as ones my teachers gave me in class.
On my computer I have a document called “Interesting Things.” It’s where I collect the odd things I hear as I walk across campus, things that strike me, and what have you. Some day they may be part of story. Or they can sit on the shelf till I need a prompt. Eventually you will find, as I did, the places where you can find prompts. For example, Theodore Roethke’s journals are a good place for me to find a turn of phrase to create a poem out of, and PostSecret cards have a person behind the secret. If a character had that secret, what would cause them to have such a secret? I always use my “Interesting Things” when I want to write something that isn’t a project I’m working on at the moment.
I also use prompts when I need a break. They are little exercises that are still helpful and spark new ideas. They offer an opportunity to play with clay and then throw it away if you don’t want to develop it. A way to exercise those writing muscles!
So I decided to help you, dear reader, and offer my own prompts to you. I’ll try to post two a week, but there will be at least one every Sunday and a second one possibly Thursdays. If you wish to do so, please post your own responses to the prompt in the comment section of the prompt’s post.
Remember that you don’t have to follow it exactly. It is a jumping off point. Fair warning: prompts can be used as a crutch and hold the piece back during the revision process. Throw the crutch away if it will make the piece better.
Also, write poetry, fiction or whatever you would like. Change the prompt if you need to do so. It’s your imagination at work.
Writing Goals
It’s always good to have some kind of goal in mind. Mine usually take the shape of long lists on my computer.
Feeling creative enough to use glue, I made a poster with all of my writing/reading/translating goals and hung it near my writing space. So I can look at it but not let it not distract me from what I’m working on at hand.
And it’s colorful.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I finished the book. Rarely do I respond out loud when I’m reading or have a physical reaction, so when I say “No!” for example or cry or feel my heart race, I really know the story has moved me. In the last ten pages I started crying, even stopping in the middle of a paragraph (unusual for me—I at least finish the paragraph or page before putting the book down) because I was so touched by the truth of a character’s statement.
It is definitely a book I would recommend reading, but you don’t have to. If you want to see the movie, then maybe you should, especially if you’re of the school of thought that books are better than movies (in most cases) or maybe not so as to not spoil the movie. Then again, because books and films are different mediums, they have different goals and use different techniques to tell a story.
Suzanna and Writing 