The Pen of a Ready Writer

      Anne Elisabeth Stengl posted on her blog this morning.  Rooglewood Press will be hosting ONE LAST CONTEST!!!!  Information will be forthcoming in her March newsletter, and the big announcement will come in June.       What think ye, my compatriots?  Shall we finish with a hurrah?  Let those who never entered before, try so they may say they were a part of it.  Let those who have done it many times before, join again to further hone our skills.  And let all of us write our best!  I would like to see a perfectly beautiful collection for the grand finale.  Anne says she thinks this will be the most exciting one yet!

(This is a second response to my location challenge , because I needed to do a cheerful one, too)      A surge of eager welcoming washes over me as I reach the peak.  This is a place I love, and it makes me happy to be here again.  And the thought that I get to show it to Garrett makes me even happier.      But there's another feeling in my heart as I throw a glance over my shoulder.  I nearly walked straight into a bear about 200 yards back.  As brave as I was in the moment, now I'm worried that it's going to sneak up behind me and corner me on this peak.  And for a few brief seconds, the fear blocks the beauty of the peak from my view.  Funny how fear does that.      But it is beautiful up here.  On either side of me, tower two huge rocks that are each probably almost half as big around as my house and are at least as tall if not taller.  Between them is a third le...

(This is in response to my own location challenge from last week)       It's not my first time in a room in Labor and Delivery on the 8th floor of the hospital.  We're the highest floor in a top medical hospital.  Which means that I can hear the choppers landing on the roof right above me, carrying patients that were too complex for smaller hospitals.        I don't hear the choppers now, though.  The room is too quiet.  Outside, in the hall, I hear nurses talking -- normal chatter, like "Hey, Rach!  Did you get the IV in room 6?"  I hear deep moans from a mommy getting ready to birth her baby.  And most cruel of all, I hear the fetal heartbeat monitor in the next room.       There's no such monitor in our room.  Our baby's heart stopped beating a few days before, and no one knows why.  Now we're here, hooked up to drugs and monitors, waiting to birth ...

       One of the background pieces of our stories is the location.  When we build the setting as if we were there, it helps the reader feel like THEY are there.  And it's easier to do that if we use places where we have been (or studied) to build on.       So here is my challenge to you.  --Write a description of a place you have been.  --Keep it small -- I don't want a description of all of Italy, I just want a view from one Italian portico. --It doesn't have to be somewhere exotic.  We all live in different places, and your normal is fascinating and new for me.  Your grocery store.  Your backyard.  Your living room.  Your classroom at school.  Your seat on the bus. --It can be somewhere exotic.  The cool thing about writing something that you're seeing for the first time is that you NOTICE EVERYTHING.  So, if you've taken a trip recently to somewhere coo...

     The Archcaptain brushed past me, his face both bored and annoyed with my application to the guard.  My hopes came crashing down around me.  I had sold everything and faced the perils of 400 miles to come to the great city of Airengard and become a member of the Archcaptain's elite force.      "I am an excellent warrior, Archcaptain." A mixture of protest and desperation in my voice.      "Yes, yes.  That is what they all say."  The Archcaptain paused his retreat, one foot already on the stone steps leading down from his portico.  "I don't need another cocky brawler."  His eyes caught mine, the piercing blue intensity almost making me quake on the inside.  "If you want to be an Elite, you must use your brain.  Find me the answers to the secrets of the palace, and I will give you a bed in our barracks."      "The secrets of the palace?"  What s...

This was a fun challenge.  I wrote a comment.  You might enjoy doing this exercise, too! http://goteenwriters.blogspot.com/2017/01/writing-exercise-1-suspense-in-dialogue.html

     So I haven't written anything since my wedding.  Which means my husband has never seen me lost in another world.      Until now.      First, I run away and hide with my computer.  I don't want anybody around.  I'm thinking. Apparently, I look disturbed or moody at this point in time.  My beloved husband came up to see what I was doing, and he kept asking me if I was okay. Of course, I looked at him with eyes that saw right through him into another world far away and told him I was fine.  Which, perhaps, was not terribly reassuring. But my thoughts are storming through my mind like a stampeding stallion, and no part of my writer brain wants to slow it down.  Let it run!  Let it be strong!  Let it be powerful!  This is the stuff epic plots are made of. I wave him away and stare into my computer screen like I'm drawing my bow and t...

     Last year, Rooglewood Press took a break from hosting the novella contest due to perfectly worthy reasons.  Shall  they resume it this year?  I don't know.      But what if they do?      January is the perfect time to start guessing what story they have lined up.  It can't be Cinderella or Beauty-and-the-Beast or Sleeping Beauty because those are already taken.  So what do you think?       My guesses are The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, or Snow White.  What are yours?