Page 1
• WELCOME
Page 2
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WHAT'S ON YOUR DESK
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WRITER MOVIE OF THE MONTH
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SAY WHAT?
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MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
Page 3
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JUST CURIOUS
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LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT...
You
are here...
Page 4
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CLEANING UP
PROSE
• CURRENT CONTEST
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SAMPLE OF EXCELLENCE
Page 5
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CHALKBOARD
- Flash Fiction Contest Winner
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OPINION
Page 6
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QUIZ CORNER
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CHARITY OF THE MONTH
"What really happened in those woods?"
2010
ReadingWriters calendar!
CLEANING UP PROSE
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The simple one-syllable word has several meanings, but manages to juggle the workload quite nicely until... a love-struck writer comes along. Never in the history of romance has a single word been more overworked. Fight the pool proliferation! Poke yourself in the pools of your eyes when you feel the desire to compare eyes to pools.
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Example: Her eyes, twin pools of mystery, intrigued him.
Example:
She felt lost in the pools of his eyes.
Example:
Two strong black pools looked back at me and dove into
my soul.
Example:
Heat rose from his simmering pools.
Example: And how shall I ward off those pools of desire?
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Pools. We swim in them. We type in them. We sometimes ride to work in them. We add to them to make a bet. We join their ranks to manipulate finances. We even play it over a table with cue stick and balls. OUR CURRENT CONTEST
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The first line of your story must begin with: The sun rose... The last line of your story must end with: ...just as the sun went down. That which occurs in between—be it drama, comedy, mystery, romance, fantasy, etc.—is entirely up to you. What changes your dawn character to the one we shall see at dusk?
Details at the Contest Café.
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Your
protagonist is about to have a day. He doesn't know it
yet, but it's going to be a day that, for him, will
live in infamy. A day she will point to, years later, as
the specific moment when something in her soul changed. It can be a
teeny tiny change or it can be a ginormous change. But
it has to occur in the light of day.
SAMPLE OF EXCELLENCE
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Last
night, I dreamt I went to
Manderley again.
Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer's fancy. As I stood there, hushed and still, I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before.
Light came from the windows, the
curtains blew softly in the night air, and there, in the
library, the door would stand half open as we had left it, with
my handkerchief on the table beside the bowl of autumn roses.
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It
seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and
for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me....
I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and
peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that
the lodge was uninhabited.... 