Here's a chance to show off your writing! 
Send us an excerpt of which you are especially proud. If it's chosen, we'll publish it here in a future issue. Approximately 500 words. Any genre. You, of course, retain all rights. It will remain in The VERB archives until you ask us to remove it.

Subject: CHALKBOARD submission
(Feel free to include a bio.)

THE FLEBBER
by
Ian Roberts

Across wet fields in grand repose,
The flebber skipped through water.
He'd just come down from Ibadan
And had a one-eyed daughter.

The flebber's wings did open up.
He took right to the skies.
He swooped and dived and soared
And then … he waved, to my surprise. 

Towards the sea, the flebber flew.
The sun rose in the east.
His tummy rumbled, and he said,
"I need a sunrise feast." 

With sharpened eyes, the flebber glared
Below him at the coast.
A fisherman cried out with fear:
The flebber nicked his toast. 

"Mmm, toasted bread," the flebber noted,
Nibbling at his prize.
A sudden thought occurred to him:
'I don't like gecko pies.' 

Across the ocean, through the spume,
The flebber headed west.
And just ahead, aboard a bed,
A dolphin scratched its chest. 

If east is green, and west is up,
No wonder I'm confused.
My cerebral direction guide
Must therefore not be used. 

He spied below him, on the sea,
A message in a bottle, 
and wondered who it might be from:
His dad or Aristotle? 

As stormy clouds turned flebber back,
He turned to contemplation.
Do I exist? Is this all real?
And what's my destination? 

 …and then he thought to himself: 'What the hell's a flebber?'

© 2005 Ian Roberts

Take a holiday from writing a few minutes and pretend you're an editor at a prominent publishing house.  

You walk into a party, grab a drink, then join your friends around the grill. Seven writers suddenly approach, eager to get your opinion of seven different book ideas. You're in a good mood, so you settle into the comfy hammock and issue the rules: Each gets one minute and up to two sentences to impress you. Go! 

Which ones have a plot and which ones have a flop?  

1.  A boy finds a dog on the side of the road, frozen and close to death. He takes him home.

2.  Pirates steal a British ship and terrorize the crew on the open sea.

3.  At the close of WWII, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair. 

4.  High school friends reunite ten years after graduation. The two "losers" of the crowd are now millionaires. 

5.  A civilian diving team search for a lost nuclear submarine and face danger while encountering an alien aquatic species. 

6.  Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled teenage nobleman's daughter who is at a crossroads in her life.

7.  A retired cop builds airplanes out of newspapers and sells them on the Jersey shore.  

The plots? Numbers 3, 5 and 6. These brief lines describe a story. An editor can easily spot the journey. A will lead to B which will lead to C and so on. If written well, such ideas will sustain readers' interest throughout a book. 

The flops? Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 7. These brief lines describe a scene or two. Nothing more. There is no journey, there is simply an occasion. The boy takes the dog home--what's next? Pirates terrorize sailors; high school students reunite; retired cop sells airplanes--where's the conflict? These characters are simply idling. 

Characters must not only have a goal, they must be willing to do something about it. That's a plot!

Details!

    “One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. 

I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. 

I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull."

 - MARK TWAIN
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn