Writing Projects

How does a week pass so quickly? Between

  • frost warnings and bringing my over-wintering plants into the house for a night,

  • bringing out my fall and winter clothes,

  • and calling for a carpenter as my chimney is leaking and my garage door lost a roller off a hinge (yes, first world problems)

it’s no wonder the weekend slipped by and no post happened.

I tried to move forward on my story last week but then I took a break.

working a flash fiction contest

On Friday, literary agent Janet Reid (aka The Shark) put up the prompt words and rules for a flash fiction contest.

shark.jpg

As I noodled around with the words, I became inspired! One writer, Steve Forti, always hides the prompt words within his story in such an amazing and natural way. He makes it look so effortless. Not!

The words for this past weekend were: fall, plummet, tip, slant, list.

Trying to become Fortiesque-like, I took on the word plummet and split it in two: plum and met. Numerous words begin with met. One word, metropolis, caught my eye. A plum metropolis? Hm. Then I saw how metropolis ends…with the letters: l, i, s. Which is the beginning of list. Aha! How Forticredible is that? I decided a character would use the phrase, “Plum metropolis that.”

Then I looked at the word tip. The immediate word that came to mind? Tipperary, a county in Ireland. I love writing about other geographical places where I have not lived (hm, I guess that might be part of my brand). So I googled Tipperary and found a travel article in The Telegraph about champion horses in Gold Vale and the city of Fethard.

These five words provided a fun way for me to fall into a story! Will I win any kind of recognition for my fun discoveries? Hopefully! Later today or tomorrow, I will find out.