This month’s challenge will centre around the image below (source). It’s entitled Fish room, and it’s one of the postcards featuring the wonderful art of Nicoletta Ceccoli.

  Gold Medal Winner: 

Quaeritata

  Gold Medal Winner: 

iconoclast

*** Edit 09/08/2008: apparently no-one found the time to participate in the July Challenge. The Challenge for August will be up by the end of the weekend. ***

This month’s challenge will be open to both prose and poetry: the requirements have been set up to allow for either type of entry. Style, theme and subject matter are pretty much for you to decide.

If you would like to participate, you can submit your entry by clicking the “Create new Challenge Entry” link below.

>> EDIT: this challenge has been closed <<

This month’s challenge will be open to both prose and poetry: the requirements have been set up to allow for either type of entry. If you decide to enter a poem cycle, please limit yourself to five poems at the most. Style, theme and subject matter are pretty much for you to decide.

  Gold Medal Winner: 

iconoclast

  Gold Medal Winner: 

BethanyM

I haven’t mentioned it here, but I take evening classes in Swedish.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that I took my written exam for this
year earlier this week, and I had to write a short story for one of the
main assignments. Before I share that with you (in translation, of
course), let me warn you that my skills in Swedish are nowhere near
decent, and any story I write in that language is going to contain
numerous grammatical mistakes and clumsy paraphrases.

This is the story of how I invented the processes of editing and rewriting. Note that I didn’t say discovered, which would entail that I merely found out about something that already existed. I did mean invent: coming up with an original and previously unknown idea. Yup, it was me who first implemented the concept of a draft version, all by myself. Of course, you have all profited from this wonderful commodity, and I bet you’re simply dying to know all about the events and the thought processes that led to this marvellous development. Well, you’re in luck. For here, for the first time in history, shall be unveiled the story of how I, dimwitted little me, came up with the idea of a draft.

I‘m tired of letting all the excess images in my head that won’t ever develop into a sizeable story go to waste. A weekly column seems like a regular way of taking proper care of many of the bizarre situations and ideas that present themselves to me. Of course, sometimes I suck or I get lazy, or I might be working on something else. Real life occasionally takes precedence, too, so a striclty weekly schedule is likely to be too optimistic.

With all the movies like "Cloverfield" and "Diaries of the Dead" coming out with the story being told through one of the characters shooting it with a camera I thought it would be interesting if there was a movie about a ship with no one on board found drifting at sea. And the security cameras retell the events of what happened.

I love helping people write. I can brainstorm like no one’s business. My mind works in really strange ways. I could very easily see myself writing for Saturday Night Live or something like that. I could write tv shows too. My friends love it because I’m endless supply of stories for all our various RPGs. I can come up with stories and ideas in seconds.

 So lay it on me. Stuck on something? I can help. Need some inspiration? I can do that.

Quite a number of people in Japan manage to pen novels on their cell phones. Apparently that’s because texting and emailing are fully integrated over there; and because most Japanese Blogging sites (akin to LiveJournal, Blogger, etc.) actively encourage their members to update via text messages.