Week Eighteen: Suicidal guy who comes to the brink and back, renewed purpose

 

Alright, so I wasn't going to post this one. One of the prompts for Microfiction Week was already about suicide. You're going to start to get the wrong idea about Freshman Me. 

But I am posting it for Week Eighteen, because it turns out to be the final prompt in the Freshman year box! After this, we are Sophomores. Expect the caliber of writing prompts to be either sophisticated or sophomoric. (Probably both, but moreso the latter.)

For this week, it does not have to be a guy. He or she does not even need to be suicidal. How about there is a difficult decision of some kind, some angst or discord about it, and a decision that shows change of some kind.

300 words! Sunday! Midnight!

Week Seventeen: Epically music'd?

Here's mine!

You have until midnight to show me yours.

200 words, my friends. That's barely an email.

Some Week Seventeen idears for you

Happy Friday!

How are your Week Seventeen stories coming along? What's that? Not great? You haven't even started?

WELL. Here are some ideas to get your brain sauces simmering: 

• Neighbors who blast music at all goddamn hours.
• A character who is in love with a certain song or soundtrack and plays it constantly.
• Someone who has had one song stuck in his or her head for three years.

Good luck! See you Sunday.

The future is (almost) here

Just a quick note:

Today I learned about a service where you leave a voicemail, it transcribes it, and then emails you the transcript as well as the MP3.

"Awesome!" thought I, and immediately after work I called it with an idea for this week's story.

Here is the emailed transcript I received when I got home:

The story about a guy who uses epic music the frame his boring everyday like such a way that it's deans epic were interesting her telling her or you didn't call me.

I've got this one in the bag.

Get all flashy and poetic

My friend Kimberly Ann Southwick is Editor in Chief of a literary magazine called Gigantic Sequins you may well have heard of. (Of which you may well have heard...? Nah.) It's great and you should definitely think long and hard about picking up a copy or few.

But I tell you this now because Gigantic Sequins is running its second annual flash fiction and poetry contest! In this case, flash fiction is being defined as less than 1000 words. Oh hey! This week's challenge is also less than 1000 words! Hmmm...

Check out the details herein:

http://giganticsequins.com/contests/

The deadline is August 15th. Do it.

Week Seventeen: Epic music during everyday stuff

Wholly different than Week Sixteen!

This is about music that does, could, or should be the soundtrack of someone's life. 

Epic music = epic life, even when that someone is only washing the dishes.

(Especially when that someone is only washing the dishes.)

Lots of room for the wacky here. In the vein of small, achievable challenges (but picking up the pace just a little), let's do at least 200 words by midnight Sunday. 

Who's in? Declare yourselves, so that we may hold you accountable.

Week Sixteen: Sung!

Here's my stab at this silliness.

I'm posting this pretty late; in the future I'll have it up earlier so people have all day to brag about what they done-did.

Please comment here with your story or a link to it on your own blog/Twittergram/Instapic/whatever!

Banish the perfectionist

From Kristine Kathryn Rusch, some really wonderful words of wisdom about how perfection is the enemy of the good:

Is the story perfect? Of course not. No story is. Not a one. No matter how many times it’s “polished” and “fixed” and “improved.” No one can write a perfect story.

If such a thing existed, then we would all read the same books and enjoy them equally. We would watch the same movies and need reviewers to tell us only which movie is perfect and which one isn’t. We would buy the same comics, again, going only for the comic that is perfect, and ignoring all the others.

Am I telling people to write crap? No. Because the choice isn’t between crap and perfection. Those are false choices.

[…]

I also think that writers need to understand that they’re not writing for one editor or agent or for a small subset of people like a critique group. Writers write for readers.

And it’s up to the writer as to how to find those readers. As Sarah Hoyt said in last week’s comments, ask yourself, “How will this book best reach its audience?” The key words here are “book,” “reach,” and “audience.”

Not “How do I impress Editor A?” or “How do I get an agent?” But how does this book best reach its audience?

[…]

The question should never ever be, “How do I write the perfect novel?” because the perfect novel or short story or play or article or essay does not exist.

Read the whole essay here.

That you're writing for your readers, not your writerly peers or agent or editor, was a dormant bulb in my head that just blazed to light. If ever you needed permission to write straight from the heart, bypassing your inner critic almost completely, this is it.

Definitely worth a full read if you have time this sunny (at least here in New England) Friday.

Your inspirational quote for Thursday

I wasn't going to inflict yet another Twyla Tharp quotation on you, but right at the end of the book, she says the following:

The libraries and museums are packed with early bloomers and one-trick ponies who said everything they had to say in their first novel, who could only compose one good tune, whose canvases kept repeating the same dogged theme. My respect has always gone to those who are in it for the long haul. When people who have demonstrated talent fizzle out or disappear after early creative success, it's not because their gifts, that famous "one percent inspiration," abandoned them; more likely they abandoned their gift through a failure of perspiration.

Bam. The perfect antidote to the cult of the young and dizzyingly talented. There was a feeling during my college years (at least, I had this feeling) that if you were any good you'd be published in your twenties. No one talked about the long tail. No one talked about the best full-time jobs for writers who were not going to earn a living wage from their writing immediately after college (i.e., all of us). No one talked about getting better as you get older (well, Margaret Weis did one time...). 

But that's the truth for almost all of us word slingers who do eventually become "successful." That's the only truth. We just don't stop writing.

Week Sixteen: Characters that spontaneously break into song

Welcome to the new Unwritten Word, where you also have to figure out what to make of this.

It could certainly be a musical. That seems obvious. But it could also be a story/poem/cave painting about people who just sing too damn much. Sometimes my girlfriend and I sing entire songs together like a yeowling feline. (Think the Game of Thrones cat but... much worse.) You are welcome to write about that. 

What else could you do with this? 

Since it's already Wednesday, let's set a very small, ridiculously achievable goal for this one:

At least 100 words, due 11:59pm EST this Sunday (June 23rd).