Rain, hail or industrial action
It’s wild wet weather outdoors around here, and equally tempestuous in my internal world. Winter is the time of year when my thoughts gallop wildly and untamed and I struggle to marshal them into anything coherent. The weather’s matching my mood. It’s almost as if Mother Nature looked around for the most chaotic energy, saw me, and decided to channel my thoughts into rain and hail storms. Add to that the tumult in the writing world; heated discussions about the influence and scope of AI generated content, the SAG-AFTRA and WGA industrial action (we’re not crossing picket lines, right? Right!), and (local to me) the federal government investment into the Australia Council for the Arts and all the discussions on what that means for writers and writing organisations. It’s a busy time. My writing has, as a result, taken a necessary backseat for now. It’s frustrating. All I want to do is write, but my brain can’t stand still long enough to manage it. I hope you’re having more success. Come tell me how your writing’s going over on Facebook or Discord. Maybe it’ll give me the inspiration I need.
~Asha
This Week’s Writing Prompt is:
This week, your job, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story, essay, or poem incorporating the following prompt:
Trope: Tomato in the Mirror
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. Ever have the feeling that everyone around you is just a little bit off, a little out of synch? Like the rest of the world is a millisecond out of time with you? It’s them, right? It’s definitely not you. Or is it? This week, we’re focusing on the Tomato in the Mirror trope. Your challenge this week is to give us a story, poem, or essay in which the main character discovers they are not entirely themselves. Perhaps they’ve been replaced with an almost identical clone, or been abducted by aliens and had their consciousness uploaded into an android replica. Maybe they’re an alternate reality version of themselves confronting a world that’s close to, but not quite the same as, their other life. Let your imaginations run wild! When you’ve got your story down, come tell us about it! Share snippets of or links to your best story in Discord or on Facebook! Stuck? Check out last year’s — no, year before last! — series on responding to prompts!
Share your response in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord, by linking your blog post, Google Doc, or other file. Check out your fellow YeahWriters’ responses, and don’t forget to leave them some love in the comments!
Looking for our weekly grids? After nearly ten years, they’ve been retired. Read more about the latest changes to YeahWrite in the #500 Weekly Writing Challenge Kickoff Post.
The Schedule
We will release a new prompt on our blog every Friday at 12pm Eastern. Then it’s up to you! Write your response to the prompt on your own blog or website and share the link in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord. If you prefer to keep your work under wraps (and away from the eyes of potential publishers), you can still ask for beta readers in the Coffeehouse and share your work privately! Every Monday, we’ll check in to see how you’re doing and what your writing goals are for the week. Wednesdays are “Work-in-Progress Wednesdays.” Share a few sentences or even a paragraph or two in the Coffeehouse (no more than 250 words, please). Even if you’re not done writing, this could be the boost you need to stay motivated. Did you publish a book? Do you have a story in a magazine? The First Friday of every month is for self-promotion, where you can share commercial links to your work for purchase. (You can always share the news that you’ve been accepted for publication, though!) And of course, the entire community is here 24-7 to share your victories and setbacks, challenges and accomplishments. So come on in, pull up a chair, and say hello. We’re all writers here.
Upcoming and Ongoing
Sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any upcoming classes, workshops, or competitions.
Scarlet Quill Society (Free Workshop w/ Optional Paid Benefits)
Welcome to the secret back room where the Scarlet Quill Society meets. In this year-long workshop, we’ll be focusing on tropes! Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t avoid ’em. For the purpose of this year’s workshop, we’re defining a trope as a building block of storytelling. It’s a device or pattern of events that is used to solve plot or character problems or communicate meaning efficiently and effectively. Check out July’s post, in which we take a look at worldbuilding: the tropes we do and don’t want to see. And then hop over to our YouTube channel to hear what our panel of experts thinksabout why Everything is Europe! If you have a good time, leave a tip and we’ll love you forever.
Scarlet Quill Society workshop posts are always free. In addition, we are offering a couple add-ons that we think you’ll find exciting and worth a few bucks a month: face-to-face (okay, virtual) monthly gatherings to delve into the topics and answer your questions, and an editorial backroom on Discord! And for a bonus, if you’re a paid SQS member and you can’t make it to a meeting, you can still send us questions beforehand and we’ll make sure to cover them.
Sign up for a membership today to join the Scarlet Quill Society and automatically receive the Zoom link and password for every meeting. One-off monthly meeting tickets can also be purchased on Kofi. At YeahWrite we believe information wants to be shared. If you can’t afford to join us for society meetings, we post the recording about a week later, and you’re welcome to leave the tip you can afford (even if that’s just a nice thank you comment). Check out our YouTube channel for more.
Super Challenge #28 (Fiction)
Spontaneous Writing Challenges
About the author:
Asha lives near the beach in Perth, Western Australia, but hates sand between her toes. She 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. Asha writes flash fiction, short stories, and creative nonfiction. She is published in a variety of places and you can find links to her work at Asha Rajan Writer.
