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 |  Challenges and activities |
A blog on my personal writing process. Just random thoughts, notes, and other stuff. Don’t know yet what that will be like. Am exploring possibilities and pulse towards an unknown future. Let’s find out! Here are challenges and activities stored. "Game of Thrones"  2017"The Soundtrack of Your Life" 2020"Resurrection Jukebox" 2020"NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon" 2020/21"The Fiction Writer's Toolbox" 2020"October Novel Prep Challenge" 2021 |
Pharell Williams, 2014 - Happy I just found out very late about this soundtrack challenge, but I will try to catch up. February 1 |
| Yoohoo, I’ve finally signed up for "October Novel Prep Challenge" [13+]. I want to write this big and important novel but I still don’t have a clue. I can start doing "The veil of death" [13+] or "Pygmalion, a serial killer's weblog" [18+] or try something completely different. Anyway, still more than 3 weeks to ponder on the question of what to do. Fantasy, thriller or something else entirely! Then, the whole month of October will be prepping my novel. I have no intention of entering NaNoWriMo because I am not ready for that huge challenge. But preparing for the write seems an excellent idea. This blog will be an account of the exercises. They are still under copyright, so no worries there. A minimum of 15 minutes per day for the exercise is doable. I am very thrilled to participate and get this writing project going. Oh, and I am still thinking about 100 poems for publication, but that’s a long term project! 1,2,3 GO! |
| My dog accidentally scared pup in water. Boss rescued pup, threw dog in air. 121 FB posts: shaming, blaming, calling me names. Hate on Net! 140 characters
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| She looked at her kitchen sink. Here we go again! For two weeks now she was procrastinating like hell; something inside her just refused to do the dishes. And it wasn’t the first time this month either! What’s wrong with me, you dirty slug? Why am I not doing my chores like everybody else? Every five minutes when passing her kitchen door she made that hand gesture wishing her dishes away, and every time she looked they were still there: dishes, cutleries, coffee cups, glasses, and whatnot. Dirty, dirty, dirty! She just wasn’t up to the task and she loathed herself for it. As the writer she was, she took up the challenge to write a horror story for Screams!!! at Writing.com that day. In a whim, the story took her 15 minutes. When she saw the competition she knew she had no chance of winning, but entered anyway. That afternoon she watched the Men’s Final at Wimbledon as well and saw Novak Djokovic win from Roger Federer. Halfway through the fifth match when it was 4-4, she made a bet: when Roger wins I do my dishes! Alas, After a tiebreak Djokovic won the championship, so she was off the hook. The dishes stayed where they were. Passing the kitchen door she made that gesture again with her hands, sat down at her computer and logged onto the site. Lo, and behold…she’d won today’s Screams!!! No more excuses, kitchen, here I come! For the next two hours, she was busy doing her chores. Finally! WC: 256
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“C’mon Jack, work with me here, what color? Blue or green? “Gee, Jill, I don’t know.” He was still working out the angle of that particular wall he had to tear down. “First things first, painting the sitting room is not on my list today.” “But I have to buy paint. Blue or green?” “Then green it is. Now let me do my job, dear.” Jill left the house, leaving him on his own. For the next 45 minutes, he was busy tearing down a brick wall. The noise was deafening, dust and brick falling from his hefty slices with a hammer. He was sweating heavily, breathing in and out like a sick elephant. With one final effort, he managed to finish the job. Done! Looking into the rubble he noticed there was something behind that last piece of brick. In the corner, where the wall once stood was an opening in the floor. As he was walking toward the hole an awful smell reached his nostrils. Yek, what the hell was that?! Peering into the dark he tore loose some floorboards. The smell was overwhelming. At that moment Jill came through the door, holding two cans of paint. She put down the cans and worked her way through the rubble. They both looked puzzled into the hole. “What’s that? Can you see anything?” “There must be something down there, it smells terrible…a dead cat maybe?” “Let’s get the flashlight, dear?” Jill got the light from the kitchen and was back in a jiffy. The light shone inside the dark hole. There, something covered with a blanket was lying in the sand. Jack grabbed a piece of the cloth and threw it aside. A body…the silhouette of a body! Jill screamed a smothered cry. Jack pulled back, his knees on the floor, his body flinching. “OMG, it’s a dead person. ” That’s when the body moved and sat erect, with its slimy head and hair above the floorboards. Piercing red eyes looking at the couple in a grim stare. Jill and Jack both fainted on the spot. The figure juggled itself out of the hole in the ground leaving splatters of green slimy stuff on the floor. It had a grin on what was left of its face. With one throw he swept the bodies of Jack and Jill into the hole and put back the floorboards. “A nice place, a lot of work though, and green paint for the living room.” It grinned and started to refurbish the house. The neighbors didn’t notice the banging from underneath the floor of Number 22, York Road. It went on for a couple of days and then stopped. In the city nobody knows their neighbors, so nothing new. WC: 456 Winner (7/14) of
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Blood sugar’s too high, maybe I’ve to shoot insulin next! More exercise, healthy food, losing weight... I ate melon. That’s good, isn’t it? Characters: 140 Round 95 |
Walking the dog. Singing a song. Misstep! My ankle. Pain! An enormous bump. Stumbling at the other side of the leash. Confined to a seat! Characters: 137 |
They met in a bar downtown. Her high heels and a killer smile, his weary wrinkled face, and tuxedo. In the night they checked into this hotel down the street. The manager gave them their key and said goodnight. They stumbled into the dim lit room and fell down the bed, smoked some pot, drank their drinks and watched TV. The clock stroke 4. He took out his gun, shot her point blank and aimed at his own head. They never checked out again. WC: 99
WOOT, WOOT I Won First Place!!  and ![Merit Badge in Creativity
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on your 1st place in the October 2018 Round of Musical Drabble](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Creativity-2180.gif) |
Hey, I am your average green leather tobacco case. My purpose is to contain the bag of tobacco and hide the horrible death pictures that are put on tobacco bags and cigarette packages nowadays. WC: 370
Note ▼ |
| Twas where wonder weaves with welcome grace, the poet’s putty poem’s face, ferociously fulminating. Ah, goblin gobbled thru grasses ghostly gosh. 140 characters
Round 80 |
| heap leaves cascading colors brown and bright: autumn! “snap,” bites dodging dog!
Prompt: Haiku |
| Liquid orange, add salt and pepper, sniff of love of the poet, blow breath over mass - pure alchemy. Syllables: 24 Lines: 7
Prompt: Alchemy |
| A spurious assumption you can't compete with the best in blogging. State your truth passionately! Syllables: 24 Lines:6
Prompt: spurious |
| Tiptoeing so I won't wake up at this nightly hour jinxing Kismet, I can barely face it. Syllables: 24 Lines: 7
Prompt: kismet |
| Existential humbug flourishing nowadays: Breath in and out; Live in the moment; and Floss! Floss! Syllables: 24 Lines:5
Prompt: Existential |
| Sleeping Beauty snores! Lulleby, lullaby Endles times ostentatiously E-iii, e-iii, w-haa, w-hoo Pretty in pink she lay Intensely poisened by the Queen Not her mother but her step Gruesome, over beauty Breath in, breath out End on and on A- ii - aa - ii Uhwwa - uhwwa Till one moment in time Yonder Prince dares to kiss Lines: 14 Form: Acrostic Poem "Invalid Item" |
| Loneliness is longing. Your shadow makes my heart ache. I can hug nor love you. A deathly embrace with nothing. Hole in my core. 139 characters. "Invalid Item" Won FIRST PLACE!!! YAY!  Featured in "Short Stories Newsletter (November 21, 2018)" ![Merit Badge in Tweet Me A Story
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on 1st place in Round 79 of [Link To Item #2040737] !](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Tweet_Me_A_Story-2051762_14.gif) |
| I bought a new guitar. Not that I can play the instrument, but I had an old one laying in the attic and I wanted to restring it so I went to the music store. There they told me the guitar was too old to restring, I had to buy a new one. So I did. I made a promise to myself to actually take lessons this time to learn how to play. So, I found a teacher online. The website was well developed, he had a good teaching record of kids, adults and even older folks who he taught the pleasures of the acoustic guitar. And he was living close by, in my neighborhood. He was teaching from his home. The first meet was very agreeable, he looked like a nice guy, his story was good and he would be a coach in teaching me to play. So, I went along, paid for the upcoming month and waited until the date arrived that I had my first lesson. In the meantime, I thought it necessary to listen to guitar music on Youtube, and learn how to tune the strings by myself, with the help of a little tuning apparatus. The first three times all went well, but the fourth time of tuning the guitar I broke a string. I was petrified. Perhaps not a big deal to others, but I thought I ruined the guitar. Luckily the shop put on a new string and that was that. But something changed from that point on. I became afraid to even pick up the guitar, let alone tune it. I even began to fear the lessons. The day after tomorrow my first lesson starts, I don’t want to go. There’s something not right about the place, but I have to go. It’s silly I know, but I am afraid and anxious. But, I paid for the first four lessons, didn’t I? So, after my lunch today I am going to pick up that guitar and play a little with it. Perhaps, I even learn to like it! I hope my fear will go away. I hope my teacher will be patient with me. WC:362 Weekly writing Challenge week 5. Prompt 2: There's something not right about the place, but you have to go there... ~ Story |
| Watching Hearing The sound of chirping Listening to the whoohoo, whoohoo of the pigeon chatter, cluck, clack of the chicken cock-a-doodle-doo of the cock cuckoo, cuckoo hoot, hoot, hoot of the owl, tu-whit-tu-whoo twitter, tweet, high up in the tree or on the land they stand still shriek, trill, quack an everlasting dawn chorus the song of birds WC:58 / Lines:18 SP spin # 3. Write a poem with the title "Bird's Song" |
| In my youth, I was very skeptical of the United States of America. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s of the last century, it was common to be a lefty in my country. And so I was, very anti-establishment, ultra left in my political views, member of The World Shop, a left movement dedicated to change the world for the better and raise awareness on poverty, ban the bomb manifestations and anti-apartheid to name a few topics. America was Reagan and Nixon and we, the youth of the Netherlands, were not in favor of that country. At least in my circles. My aunt had immigrated to the States and had invited me numerous times to come over and visit, but there was no way I would do that, so I declined every time. Till 2004 when I was in my second wind and the world no longer was divided into left and right, at least in my country The Netherlands. I was curious to what end The States had reformed over the years, and I was interested in the people and in its Nature. So, I visited in the Fall of 2004 for the first time. It was an eye-opener. I had never encountered such an interesting and beautiful country as the US and I immediately fell in love with the people who were friendly and respectful, and its Nature. The strangest thing happened: I experienced something in the air I had never experienced before: the feeling of utter freedom, of joy over ‘the sky is the limit’ of great hope and potential. It was the beginning of a change in my attitude towards the USA. I was smitten and head over heels. For four weeks I traveled through Colorado, visited Denver and stayed one week longer to participate in a sculpture’s workshop, crafting black stone from Zimbabwe from an African artist. I had the time of my life. When I went home I made a promise to myself to come back as soon as possible, perhaps even at Christmas time that same year, to really experience the life of an ordinary citizen, to find out if living in the States was something for me. So, I did. I was there Christmas time 2004, celebrating with my family in Aurora, Colorado, and I even managed to do some volunteering in a homeless shelter in Denver. It was a great experience and I was convinced I would go back to the States to work and live there. Alas, suffice to say Life got in the way and my plans stranded. I never went back. Till last year, when a friend of mine wanted to visit New York City and had no one to travel with her. She obviously didn’t want to go on holiday all by herself and so she invited me to come with her as her companion on a week’s trip to the city that never sleeps. On her expense! I immediately said yes, how could I refuse? A dream come true, I was going to visit this beautiful country once more and even better I would have the opportunity to pay my respects and to mourn over the deaths of so many: 9/11. I would finally have a chance to visit Ground Zero since that horrible event 16 years ago was still imprinted in my mind. But again: Life got in the way. In the form of a new President, Donald Trump. And since he is my very own nightmare as the man in power of the most important job in the world, it was imperative I could not visit The States while he was in power. I felt that strong about him. So, finally, after long deliberation, I declined the trip with my friend. I won’t return to this land of the brave till President Trump is out of office! Is it a fluke on my part? Am I overreacting to this new situation with Trump at the wheel? Perhaps, but the man scares me to death. He is my worst nightmare and I think a danger to the equilibrium of the world. For all I know, he can easily disrupt the slight veil of peace that is still predominant in the Western World. But with his erratic behavior, I am not at all sure what will become of the relationship between different countries. He is making me very nervous indeed. Of course, I am in no position to pass judgment, I only know what the newspapers are telling me, what the local television and CNN is broadcasting and we all know they are not really in favor of the man. But I try to stay informed and I am as good an informed global citizen with an opinion as anybody else. So I am as much entitled as anybody. I regret not visiting New York this year, and I hope to have the opportunity to come back real soon. Because that would mean somebody else is ruling the most important country of the Western World. I am hoping for the best. Till then I am just reading newspapers, watching television and praying President Trump is not doing something terrible like disrupting world peace, among other things. And till then I am dreaming of visiting the States once more while reading the bible of the global traveler: Lonely Planet, edition USA. I look at its maps, read the descriptions of the various chapters of the different states and capitals, cities and towns. I watch CNN and marvel on the poetry of the American language, its art, and writers, its science and culture. And of course I enjoy participating at this wonderful American, yet internationally oriented website of Writing.com. And sometimes, when I lay awake at night I regret my decision not to visit New York City. But there is no way back, my friend already went on another holiday with somebody else. I’ve had my chance. So, I wait and pray nothing bad will happen in the global dynamics of this world. And I pray I will have my chance to visit once more one of the most beautiful countries of this globe: the USA. WC:1030 House of Black and White: Dark Story prompts. # 12. "I won't return to this land until..." |
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