Yarns Of Wool And Words
Winter is a really unproductive season for me. I find the dark, cold days affect my energy and enthusiasm, and I struggle to maintain a reasonable schedule. When I’m in a writing slump like this, I try to exercise other creative muscles. Sometimes, a push in one creative direction can kickstart another.
So this month, I’ve been crocheting poppies. “Why poppies?” I hear you ask. Well, the short answer to that is, because they’re easy to make and delightful to look at. The long answer involves the 5000 Poppies project, run by volunteers for the Australian War Memorial’s 2018 rememberance of WWI. I’ve crocheted around 40 poppies so far, and am finding a thrilling side effect; I’m also writing more. Who knew knotting yarns with a hook would lead to spinning yarns with my keyboard? (See what I did there? Yarns as wool knotted with a crochet hook, and yarns as stories? I know. I have Dad jokes. The other editors generously put up with me regardless.)
How do you kickstart your writing when you’re in a slump? Let me know in the comments. I love it when you share tips.
September Poetry Slam: Sijo
What poem blends the best elements of haiku, sonnet, and ballad? The Korean form called sijo! Busy with back-to-school? Don’t worry. It’s also short! Learn to write a 3-6 line, 40-50 syllable poem – with a twist – in this month’s slam.
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 it down to other territories.
This week’s prompt comes from Anusha’s essay Forgetting to Fly: “I want to know how his hair is still black.”
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: 750 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.
1. In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the fiction|poetry badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
2. Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
3. Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
4. Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
5. 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.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Asha keeps moving from one side of the world to the other. Her most recent move has taken her back to Perth, Western Australia where she grew up. She lives near the beach but hates sand between her toes. It’s a real conundrum. Asha began blogging at YeahWrite in October 2014 with this post, and YeahWrite was lucky to pull her on board as a Contributing Editor in December 2016. She is currently working on a novelette that grew from a series of flash fiction pieces. Asha is published in a variety of places including Modern Loss, PANK, Dead Housekeeping, and SheKnows. You can find her inconsistent blogging at Parenting In The Wilderness, or at her fiction blog, FlAsha Tales.
