Month: October 2020

the day we become silent

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Log into our virtual meeting at 1pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 12pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

A note on the prompt

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted by Global Citizen

Please do all you can to cast your ballot by Election Day.

Treat

the day we become silent

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Join our virtual meeting at 8pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 7pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

A note on the prompt

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted by Global Citizen

Please do all you can to cast your ballot by Election Day.

Seasonal Ekphrastic . . .

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Log into our virtual meeting at 1pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 12pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

A note on the prompt

From “Can S.F. sway the presidential election? Drag queens support the resistance by writing to swing voters” by Heather Knight in the San Francisco Chronicle, October 15, 2020.

One crewmate has been replaced by a parasitic shapeshifter.

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Join our virtual meeting at 8pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 7pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

A note on the prompt

The line is from promotional text for Among Us, a game by Inner Sloth. Last night, U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar joined some popular players (including my family’s favorite, Disguised Toast) in a livestream of the game on Twitch to “get out the vote.” The stream was watched by over 400,000 viewers. You can watch a recording of AOC’s full stream of the event here. It’s, um, three and a half hours long. (Who says video games erode kids’ attention spans?)

That’s worth remembering.

A secret list, a box of photographs, a fortune from a cookie slipped into a scrapbook.

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Log into our virtual meeting at 1pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 12pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

A note on the prompt

Inspired by the title, The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering, a post-apocalyptic and surprisingly whimsical novel by Jeffrey Rotter.

In the early days of his exploration, he expected the dune to be gone after every big storm, and following the 1944 hurricane that sank the USS Raleigh off Siesta Key, he was sure it would be. But when the skies cleared, the island was still there. So was the dune, although the hundred-mile-an-hour winds should have blown all the sand away, leaving only the bare rocks. Over the years he has debated back and forth about whether the magic is in him or in the dune. Perhaps it’s both, but surely most of it is in the dune.

Stephen King, “The Dune”

I’m thinking about how this passage describes something in nature that astonishes and comforts us by its persistence and survival against all odds. But since this dune appears in a Stephen King story, you might also think such things are a little creepy.

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Join our virtual meeting at 8pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 7pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, “What are you going through?”

Simone Weil, quoted in What Are You Going Through? by Sigrid Nunez

Over the course of the novel, as the narrator traces her relationship with a sick friend, she also explores the stories behind those she encounters along the way: a rescued cat at an Airbnb, an elderly housebound Fox-News conservative, a brilliant but irritating ex-lover passing through town. How might other “passers-by” answer the question?

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Log into our virtual meeting at 1pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 12pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

There is a school made of twigs on the oxbow lake

Visit this Setting Generator Bot and use one of its results to inspire your work. If you are interested in tweaking the results or creating your own setting based on the bot’s parameters, the formula is “There is a [building] made of [natural material] on the [geographical feature].” This combination of elements draws playfully on your individual, conscious and subconscious associations with world cultures, historical threads, and sensory observations and imprints. Fun!

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Join our virtual meeting at 8pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 7pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

Sadly, the Setting Generator Bot is no longer operational. Enjoy the wealth of archives!

The garden-facing room on the second floor

Set your work in the world suggested by the prompt; or go within the persona observing the room and the garden; or storm out of the metaphorical house and find something really interesting to write about.

Use the prompt to inspire your work in any form (poetry or prose; fiction of any genre; creative nonfiction, essay, or memoir).

Log into our virtual meeting at 1pm for readings and discussion.

If you prefer to post your work to our blog, visit Submittable after 12pm to upload your work. We will do our best to publish everything we receive.

This little snippet of a setting is from “Super Goat Man” by Jonathan Lethem.