So here's a funny story ... I had NO idea it was Friday. And, FYI, its JUNE! What the heck!?!?!
Anyway, let's get to it then, shall we?
Anyway, let's get to it then, shall we?
Here are Lissa's answers to my 'getting to know the judge' questions:
Hi! My name is Alissa Leonard.
I have been writing off and
on since I was in middle school. However, it was more off than on for too long.
Last November I was introduced – so to speak – to NaNoWriMo. I used the
motivation of deadlines and the encouragement of talking with other writers to
start up again. I have been writing consistently ever since.
My current WIP is
at 94,000 words. It is a Young Adult Fantasy novel – more High Fantasy than
Fairy Tale. I hope to finish it by the end of summer and start querying later
in the fall. That’s, of course, assuming my three small children let me!
My writing style is as far away from outlining as is
possible to get. I started with a vague idea of theme, a main character and an
ending. Then I just sat down to write. At about 20K I wrote a very rough
outline – more like a list of events that would happen than anything resembling
an outline – and I’ve been moving slowly but surely since then.
If I had to
give advice, it would be to just write. Find a time and do it. I had so many
excuses about how I didn’t have the time to write, but now that I’ve made it a
priority I’m using the time I have – the same 24 hours as everyone else – and
making it work. Sure, some days I don’t get to it – some weeks even – but I do
it whenever I can and I keep moving forward. Set goals that are challenging but
attainable.
Oh, and read. Read both in your genre and out of it. I may write
and read primarily in fantasy and science fiction, but I love so many books not
classified as such. Reading is one of the best ways to learn about good
writing!
And speaking of reading…I’m looking forward to reading your entries
this week! Have fun! J
FLASH FACTORY FRIDAY #6
6/1/12
YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE PICTURE AND USE BOTH WORDS!
For the prompt, Lissa has chosen two of her own photos AND two words.
PICTURE PROMPT:
PICTURE PROMPT:
WORD PROMPT:
Along with the photos, you must use BOTH of the following word prompts:
CRACKLE and HOPE
THANKS Alissa!!!
And good luck to all who enter!
*Remember, the winner of this week gets to judge next week AND pick the prompt(s)!
REMEMBER: THIS WEEK YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE PICTURE AND USE BOTH WORDS.
Ready ... set ... FLASH!
To Review:
Word or picture prompt (OR BOTH!)
50 word minimum / 350 word limit
24 hours
GO!
*Remember, post your entry right here in the comments, please! Don't forget word count and Twitter handle! (Or another way for me to reach the winner!)
I call it Escape:
ReplyDelete“It's coming”
“How did it find us?”
I lock the doors, Shay closes the curtains. “How long?” She asks.
“Not long.”
“We'll never make it.” Cinda says trying to arrange the necessary components on the coffee table. Rose, orange peel, surfer, mint leaves, Juniper berries, indigo and lavender. Her hands shake as she begins to cast the spell.
“We have to.” I watch from my post through a crack in the curtains, a sliver knife in each hand.
“But...” Cinda's voice falters as she sprinkles rain water over the mixture.
I don't take my eyes off the drive way. As far as anyone is concerned this small suburban house is home to three sisters. The mortals have no idea that we three are more then that, that what we came for, what we found will keep the world safe from a new out break of magic wars, so long as we can get out. “Hope and luck, we have both, now do it!” She listens to me. She always does. Shay holds the box, Pandora's box. It will have to pry it from her fingers if it gets here. But it wont come to that. I'm their guardian, they wont die or fail as long as I breath.
There is a crackle, sparks. The rainbow comes through, it is our road. They take it first. I can see it, it is almost here.
“Tere!” calls Shay, “Hurry!”
I run for the rainbow road. It will take me home. As I reach the colors it crashes down the door. But we escape, we did it. In it's wraith it destroys the house, but what does that matter it was only a house.
(word count 292, @gloriasigountos)
I'd been chasing rainbows for years.
ReplyDeleteI'd never have believed she was real - after all, who's ever heard of a female leprechaun? But she was magnificent. I should have left with her when I'd had the chance.
"If you change your mind, you know where to find me," she smiled and left on the back of a runaway promise, and a rainbow.
I stumble through the trees. The rainbow is still there! I'm so close!
Hope crackles through my heart; brittle and dried out from years of not quite getting there in time. Disappointment can't kill, but it can render you a husk.
Please don't fade, not this time.
I run faster.
Susan grabbed her daughter’s hand and began to lead her across the street. Stepping over broken branches and trash, the two of them inched their way towards their home. As the little girl shuffled her tiny feet and struggled to keep up with her mother, she could feel her mother’s hand trembling as it led her.
ReplyDeleteThe howling wind and the torrential downpour from the day before had driven away the usual sounds of cars roaring, children laughing and dogs barking, leaving Susan with only the crackle of twigs beneath her feet and the sound of her heart thumping against her chest.
With the storm picking up and the town ordering evacuations, Susan grabbed her daughter and loaded the car. As she pulled out of the driveway amidst heavy rain, she knew it was going to be bad, but she never imagined she would find her house in ruins.
“Is there anything left?” the daughter’s tiny voice asked.
Susan crouched down in the ruins and fought to hold back the tears. She looked over at her daughter and saw tears streaming down her face. Screams and curses filled Susan’s head, but she dared not utter any of it.
“I…I don’t know,” Susan responded, surveying the area.
Broken furniture, splintered wood with exposed nails and shards of glass were everywhere. The roof had collapsed leaving a half set of stairs as the tallest structure around. The refrigerator had tipped on its side and the door lay open against the ground.
Susan approached the refrigerator and picked the door up, closing it. Attached to the front of the door with a butterfly magnet, a sheet of paper with a colorful drawing looked to be the only thing still intact. Susan grabbed it and held it up for her daughter.
The daughter smiled at the brightly colored image of a house with a rainbow beaming above it.
“Will our house ever look like that again?” the daughter asked, sniffling and wiping her nose with her sleeve.
Susan smiled and rubbed her daughter’s head.
“There’s always hope.”
(343 words, @hlpauff)
Etke could feel the air crackle with anticipation as she crouched on all fours and instinctively pushed. Very soon, she’d behold her very own child. Her family would’ve been so surprised if they’d lived to see this day, the so-called overeducated woman not only a wife but now also a mother at age forty. As she continued pushing, she wondered what part would’ve shocked her family more, becoming a first-time mother at forty or being married to a man a decade her junior.
ReplyDelete“Would you like to reach down and catch your own baby?” the midwife asked kindly. “God knows you’ve waited long enough for this moment. It’s a very special thing when a woman catches her own baby instead of having it handed to her after the fact.”
Etke nodded, putting her hands down to be ready. The next thing she was aware of, a tiny being was in her arms. A perfectly-formed little girl, the legacy, the eternity, of the Berkowitzes. Etke ran to girls just as her own parents had, and her dear sister Chayka.
“After you deliver the placenta and we can cut the cord, would you like to carry her outside?” Tikva asked as she gazed upon her adoptive mother’s first blood child. “There’s a beautiful rainbow.”
“I’ll help you if you feel weak,” Fredek volunteered.
After Etke had nursed the baby and delivered the placenta, she slowly swung her legs over the bed and let Fredek walk her over to the backyard. There, in the middle of the sky, was a beautiful rainbow, positioned squarely in the middle of their house.
“Your name is Keshet,” Etke told the baby. “The rainbow is a symbol of hope, of God’s promise never to destroy the entire world again. Your name will be a reminder to you and to all of us that life has begun again after we were almost destroyed.”
“Very good choice,” Tikva smiled. “Let’s hope she lives up to her beautiful name.”
Word count: 332
Twitter: @Anyechka
They said the explosion was so loud, people two states over screamed.
ReplyDeleteThe nearest four towns melted to the ground within minutes. Further out, where we hid, power lines crumpled, flung in tangled messes across the wreckage of entire city blocks. With Internet and TV services down, all that agonizing first week we had no choice but to listen like everyone else to hope and despair crackle on car radios. Even that tiny effort didn’t help, not really; after all, the newscasters could hardly tell us the state of specific subdivisions.
Days oozed past.
“Is the world over?” my little girl wondered as we inched our way back. She pressed her nose against the glass of the car’s rear window in fascination.
In another three minutes we would know what, if anything, remained.
Two minutes.
One.
I looked out across the devastation of our now-unrecognizable neighborhood: jagged, charred toothpicks which once used to be houses and trees, erupting from the blackened earth, and surrounding three white nuclear towers, still standing—impossible!—silent but inexorable in the darkness.
“No, honey, the world’s not over,” I said, pulling over and stretching golden arms toward the towers in satisfaction. “Not yet. But soon.”
200 words
@postupak