New Writing Prompt Site: Thimbleful Thursdays

Thimbleful Thursday will post a writing prompt (usually an idiom) each Thursday, along with a wordcount goal between 100 & 500 words.

The goal is to write a fic within the next week featuring the prompt in some way - inspired by, taking the idiom literally, twisting it on its head, your choice - and staying within 10% of the wordcount goal (for example, between 180 & 220 for the 200-word weeks, between 450 & 550 for the 500-word weeks, and so on).

I'm pretty excited about it, but, then again, it's my site. ;-)

Check it out!

Taugannock Falls St. Park - looking out across the gorge to the lake

Another picture from the series I've been posting, from your 8/17 hike. Taughannock Creek feeds into Cayuga Lake (one of the Finger Lakes) at the base of the park; you can't really see the lake in this picture because sky & lake blend together, but it's there.
( Read more... )

Please help me narrow down this tag to 5 or ten choices...

http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/morepls

I have "write a more-please" on my writing list, but when it comes up, I often find myself paralyzed by choice. (This is not helpful for writing & directly in counter to the purpose of the list!)

Thus, I'm asking you guys to help me narrow it down. Pick one to three things you'd most like to see continued and comment here.

(For completests: I created a morepls: fulfilled tag for things I've, well, written more to, but I didn't backlog. If you see something that needs the tag to be changed to "fulfilled," either change the tag yourself or leave a comment on the post that I should change it.)

Friday Flash: Intelligent Life

Written to @ShingetsuMoon's prompt (here but spoilers-ish) for Friday Flash

---

The machines started small on Earth, as they had on every planet so far.

They found the brightest, the cleverest, the most innovative - people and dolphins, elephants and corvids, apes and chimps. They picked them off, one by one or in groups.

A smart guy dies in Oxford and a grifter dies in New York City, who's going to make the connection? A murder of ravens goes missing - who notices? An elephant at least makes a stink when she falls dead.

They noticed the dolphins first - but it was a group of researchers who noted it, and they weren't far behind. Then the chimps, signing "help us, help us," until the virus destroyed their brain.
( Read more... )

Outtake: Things Need to Change (A story of the Addergoole School)

Posted here:

http://www.addergoole.com/9/2014/08/outtake-things-need-to-change/

( cut for excerpt )

http://www.addergoole.com/9/2014/08/outtake-things-need-to-change/

Visiting Doomsday, a story of Addergoole/Doomsday Academy

This is written as @inventrix's commissioned continuation of this drabble posted on the Addergoole Facebook (also the first ~100 words of this piece).

Luke folded his wings against his back and tried not to stare.

When Cynara had come to them, to Regine, saying “I built a school,” he hadn't know what to expect. Hell, when she'd started building the CITY, he hadn't know what he'd find.

What he saw was... children, and teens, moving from building to building, smiling, their grey-and-black-and-white uniforms adorned with splashes of color and their interactions adorned with what sounded like playful rivalry.

He'd come anticipating a mess to be dealt with, or a boot camp to be... handled.

He didn't quite know what to think about this.

~( Read more... )

---

Next: Whilst at Doomsday...

Being A Samurai Takes Work, a drabble of Doomsday Academy for the Giraffe Call

A commissioned continuation from (I believe) thnidu.

After Gonna Be a Samurai

and Going to Learn How to be A Samurai.

---

Being a samurai took a lot of discipline. That's what the books had said. Discipline and hard work and kimono and...

And apparently it took math classes, too, history classes, watching tv shows called anime from before the collapse, and, peh, being nice to all his fellow students. Even the silly ones.

And it took listening to Miss Ascha as if she were his sensei. Which, Austin supposed, she really was. And that meant more math and history and geology and, well, more being nice to his fellow students.

He bowed very politely to Sianna. If she wanted him to learn how to waltz, well, he guessed he was learning the waltz with her.

---

I don't have a strong mental image for Austin yet (except touseled light-brown hair), but Sianna looks more or less like this

Want more words, or just really like this post? Drop some money in the tip jar!

(the tip jar is a kitty for reasons)

Weird Summer - a blog post

It's been a weird summer, and an even weirder week.

The weather's been off all summer - spring storms and autumn chills through July and August, grey days and damp nights and not a day in the nineties - hardly a day in the 80's! And I've been a little off, too. Not entirely sure why, but it's been a bit harder to get excited, and bit harder to hold on to energy, all summer - all year - long.

These things happen, and as we go into September, I'm trying to muster energy to ... well, to have energy.

The weather might be chilly, but it's lovely for hiking; I want to do more of that in the next few weeks. Then there's the wedding - Best Friend Evar is getting married at the end of the month - AND she & Fiance are coming to visit this weekend!

(gonna be so much good food, and so much awesome hanging out, and so much... everything!)

(I don't get to see them often; they live ~4 hours away and are Very Busy People)

So! There are things to be excited about, and one of my goals for September is to work on remembering that.

The other goals: remember I'm trying to lose weight, not gain it; and actively work on submitting stories to anthologies/contests.

Oh, and get that Kickstarter thing going.

I can do this!