The sky’s the limit
Constellations in the city are broken things.
In the city it is never completely dark even when the street lamp outside my window is broken and the entire neighborhood is asleep. Low-hanging clouds make it brighter, not darker, with reflected light, and when the sky is clear there are still pieces missing, entire swaths of stars. It makes it hard to connect the dots, to see the whole picture.
And so when I lay back in my lounge chair in Central Oregon this weekend and looked up, I found myself drowning in stars. There were so many that the sky was nearly white in places. How, I wondered, did the Ancients pick out patterns against such a backdrop? How did they decide this star, here, this one is important if you connect it with this other one, but that one, that one does not deserve a place in the stories? Instead of mentally filling in lacunae between stars, I found myself filtering them out. It was the only way I could make sense of the enormity of the sky.
If you have a story to share this week, be sure to read the submission guidelines before you press post. Have a favorite yeah writer or two? Why not ask them to be your writing partner? Everyone needs another set of eyes to point out the typos, content errors, and ungainly phraseologies in our posts. Stop by the coffeehouse and meet some of the people behind the words!
Prompt up!
Prompt up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we choose a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction post and announce it in the kickoff. It’s your job to use that prompt in your poem or story and then run with it. The prompt is just a springboard, though: feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it, change it, or float down it to other territories.
Hema told us about an experience teaching English as a second language in her post, Helena. This week’s prompt taken from her essay is: She didn’t have the luxury of time.
Labor Day micro challenge
Here in the U.S., Labor Day is just under a week away (September 5, 2016), and we thought we’d take advantage of the holiday to mix it up a little. Next week we’ll be offering a micro challenge, reminiscent of the old days of early 2016. If you’re looking for something new to try or you’re missing our old challenge, make sure you check that out NEXT week! (You have no idea how excited I am.)
Also, make sure you stay tuned in the coming weeks for announcements regarding our next super challenge. This one will be for all you fictioneers out there, so don’t miss out on any updates. Sign up for our mailer today! We promise not to spam you.
Nonfiction know-how and poetry slam are back!
Well, not quite, but soon! Come back tomorrow to see what we’ve got up our sleeves for September. In the meantime, you can always check out our archives if you’re needing a little more inspiration this week. Happy writing!
Yeah write #281 fiction|poetry writing challenge is open for submissions!
Basic yeah write guidelines: 750 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
- In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the challenge grid badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry
- Follow the InLinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid
- Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message
- Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge
- Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Loading InLinkz ...
