Lee is three years old
ear stud for his birthday gift
but smile kept inside.
He’s knows to be a brave little
soldier. He ain’t a sissy.
Lee is twenty-one,
a bullet wound drains away
the smile kept inside -
a touch the first and last
he wanted for his birthday.
Random Word: Delivery
Describing your life (or something) onat the moment of writing on a Saturday in a phrase using just six words.
Hmm, adapt Celtic myth for radio?**
**I have a book of Celtic stories that the cover describes as …accessible…masterful storytelling…entertaining style. Well I don’t know what book they read but it’s full of phrases like…grim visage…smiled sneeringly or dialogue like… is that not a proud warrior who cross the plain. It reads like respectable elderly Victorian gentleman trying to loosen the bowtie and get down with the naughty nineties crowd. As bad as your dad trying to say that rap has a beat like his old glam rock bands. I’m critical from two perspectives. One is that I do live story-telling and it lacks this mediums energy and immediacy. The other is that it lacks filmic quality in the writing, in that it creates images in the readers mind through sensory hooks and vivid characterisation. So I’m playing with the idea of taking the well known story The Sons of Tuirenn and using the visual possibilities of radio to retell the story. My initial idea is to have narrator commenting and reacting to the formal story that dissolve back to the “real” events he experienced . The challenge is to give this ‘current time’ story its own dramatic arc. I was thinking of a bardic competition to the King where they compete to tell the story that puts him in a good light. The narrator who stares at you from the above picture is at the top table remembering the “real”events.
‘We can’t afford a baby.’
‘Oh, so the breadwinner has spoken.’
But he loved her so backed off saying, ‘Let’s try, after all they taste good.’
Random Word: Atrabilious
Think you can write a 55 word story? Then visit 
Pouring the coffee over the tranquilliser, Kate thought great body, his liver alone should yield 5k.
Random Word: Caffeine
Note this has become the seed of a much longer story called Warm heart,cold hand
Looking at the picture, Granny Sue knew the business was in trouble. What she wouldn’t give to be freeclimbing, with some dirt under her fingers and the sweat just rising. Instead, she was stuck here with her dozy grandson. ‘Right, make the rope packing instructions work, or clear your desk.’
Random Word: Explicit
This is a microstory that caught my eye in Twitterland this week. Click on the heading if you want to visit the author’s Twitter Site. Or the post timestamp to go direct to the story.
I loved him but he couldn’t look past the scars. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I hold his eyes now. He can’t stop looking at me.
11:46 PM May 22nd via web
Maybe it was because he was bored. Prof Bailey tried to explain it to the committee of enquiry but they were lynch-mob angry. That first amber glass had been so cool. They’d be alive now if he had stopped. But he hadn’t and the wrong red button gave death freedom.
Random Word: Colour
Robin peered over his shades, ‘Look I’m just a street juggler how can we rob a bank?’
Laura, a unicyclist dressed in gold skimpies, said,’ I don't know yet but Harry the statue, Windy Flame and Dumbbell Nan are in. We need money to stop them ripping the town apart.’
Random Word: I wonder
He tried photos but what he saw wasn’t him. Nor the portrait. In despair, he sliced his face splashing blood. For that moment, it was him.
In time, the sketches sold for millions but Joe said fame had stopped him drawing when really the artist had died from the AIDS he gave her.
Random Word: Epigone
Think you can write a 55 word story? Then visit
‘Jesus,’ he was flying away with a cool million. The saps had fallen for worthless bonds leaving Bugsy to take the rap. As the biplane levelled, he looked down - the gun blast his last memory.
Below, Johnny two-guns was hitting first but above in the plane, removing his goggles, Bugsy just said, ‘Got yar.’
Vera stared at him and shouted ‘Votes for Woman.‘ She rattled her chains and defied him to ruffle her unmentionables and remove her. He did.
Random word: Sacred Cow
‘Isn't it super,the bags are packed…what darling, I can’t hear. Reggie? Yes he’s coming as well. I thought we could…of course he’ll not play gooseberry, it’s our holiday…oh alright, bye darling.’
‘Reggie old sport, do you mind, Val a bit scratchy—’
‘Do you think she suspects, sweet-pea?’
Random Word: I love it
This is a microstory that caught my eye in Twitterland this week. Click on the heading if you want to visit the author’s Twitter Site.
She left because apparently everything she did ended up in my damn stories. What a great plot twist, I thought.
‘It is not right to hide away. What is wrong in bathing with friends the old way?’
Aiko sighed, it was just like papa to refuse a home tub.
Random Word: Misoneism
As the men cracked and crushed stone, the man watched. He had seen and built the roads of Rome, laid the tracks of Norman kings, stood in civil war and wept as Scotland died but now as turnpikes rose, once again he would see roads pour over hill and plain.
Random Word: Macadam
‘No, give cow and wife at the turning of seasons - gods are frowning and more sacrifices needed.’
‘But tribe elders gave word that you help.’
‘We all suffer – me down to hundred wife.’
Random Word: Banking
Describing your life (or something) onat the moment of writing on a Saturday in a phrase using just six words.
Last writing assignment done and sent**
**I’ve just completed an university Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing which gives me a Dip LCW. So the business card now reads for my graduate and post-graduate qualifications as
John XXX-XXXX Msc(Economic &Social Studies); BA(Hons); CQSW; PGCE(FE); Dip LCW
Not bad for a kid who left school with no qualifications at 16 in 1970!
Think you can write a 55 word story? Then visit
‘What can we do miss?’ The little boy shivered as he heard the head of water sweeping down.
‘A lot,’ the abandoned plank was her way out. Roberta grabbed the boy and steadied herself to surf as she had never surfed before. She was going to live and get the bastards who had done this.
That the child screamed silently through his eyes was good. Crying ended at last. Soon his pain would became the suffering of his subjects.
Random Word: Indurate the child
‘I can’t, it kinda durty.’ Mary-Sue, pulled her dress and knees together.
Rob just stood not understanding. He wanted a baby. ‘But yar promised me and all you have to do is tou—’
Her dad’s first punch broke Rob’s neck so now Mary-Sue plays Second Life with the door locked.
Random Word: Babies
‘Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind…’
Phew, this better be good for a cough, thought Hal.
Random Word: Linctus
This is a microstory that caught my eye in Twitterland this week. Click on the heading next to the picture if you want to visit the author’s Twitter Site.
"If you had a superpower, what would it be?" she asked. "Christ, not again," he said. Her Alzheimer's is getting worse, Superman thought.
We
promise
that taxes
will be lighter.
Yes folks, lower then
those scoundrels in power.
Your hospitals and schools safe
from cuts and free to those that need.
And we will keep out the immigrants
and sing of the land that is good and free.
We’ll whisper
you
the truth.
Random Word: Promises
Louise smiled as she looked across at the happy couple but her eyes said gold digger. Their days at the Berwick country club were at an end.
Random Word: Morganatic
The smiling Nazi pressed the button - the war was won.
Holding up hands as a circle, each child of the future cheered the light that birthed them.
As the gas stole the air of the innocent, they died but their souls gave a dying world hope. The war was won.
Random Word: A Happy Day
Describing your life (or something) on at the moment of writing on a Saturday in a phrase using just six words.
The Left won’t play together so...**
The UK general election has resulted in no overall parliamentary majority but the left and centre parties are not thinking of joining forces so allowing the Tories in to slash and burn public services.
She looked down and said yes. He was her knight in shining armour. It only after the honeymoon that she noticed the rust under the surface.
Random Word: Alembic
‘Why? Isn’t it written that our Lord choose his mother? Women pick the egg or the sperm now so why not us the mother?’ The unborn waited for a reply.
The custodian, smiled and let him fall, thinking, he’ll be trouble.
Random Word: Mother
‘We stand on the boat of life as it flies into the future where not even the birds of trouble will be roasted.’
‘Hmm, that’s working for me.’
Random Word: Catachresis
The comforting sound of a scream in the kitchen followed by the noise of the blender, let me know I'd soon be fed. No one cooks like Mother.
Published: 2:31 AM May 1st via Ping.fm
‘Go on tell me again why you love me,’ said Kate, giving Edward a hug and a kiss. Blushing, he said, ‘Because you’re soft and true, with eyes that drown, and a touch that…’
Kate smiled. Behind his back, she saw Bob, her lover, creep backwards out the open door.
Random Word: 10 Reasons Why
BlogHer and BookRenter, a company that rents textbooks to college students, have joined forces to make a difference through books during May 3-28, by generating new books for children who need them most -- via the nonprofit organization First Book. Go to BlogHer and help to get two books donated.
Lord Horace was shocked. It was an outrage on the day of Queen Victoria’s anointment.
Random Word: 4th May
The leg was the breakthrough – the rest of the body long gnawed and rotted but stuck in a sand patch was a swimmer’s leg.They had found her.
Random Word: natatorial swimmer's
An early memory is standing at the teachers desk reading Janet and John*, which dates me as a 50’s child. I somehow learned to read overnight despite having no books at home or any bedtime reading. It cost me my roots but gave me freedom. A price spared my son.
*Americans knew them as Alice and Jerry who sound far more exciting.
Random Word:Books Make a Difference
Describing your life (or something) on at the moment of writing on a Saturday in a phrase using just six words.
Learning too much ‘ing’ is bad! **
**The overuse of participle phrase( the adding of ing to words: fidgeting, considering, flopping ) is best avoided by turning the phrases into their own sentences. As when overused they create a clickety-clack rhythm to your prose. This is a bad thing unless you want the effect when it becomes a good thing. Do you know how many can creep into a 5000 word story? Just give thanks that you don’t. Now only ten more pages to go and then it’s a review of each individual sentence construction for its punch and cadence. Editing, so much fun that it’s a secret.
![Proposal[15]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqIpd9TWXGAyUVnv3rzDJeggJn5t0e1TDzXttdGNxBHXtDuum1PMBTdL6MP3kPsjvXAQXzinGp8K1_aAIHaOHBu27UEY9NaGefUQP3b_5NPcoXbsplWTP-OXgtwuUDwtTBzLVgiD0zy8/?imgmax=800 "Proposal[15]")
