Toe in the Water

A Psychological Ploy

A Psychological Ploy

SCREAMS!!! has an interesting contest running at the moment. Called a Pop-Up Contest, it is unusual for several reasons. For a start, it comes at the end of, or maybe in the middle of, a hiatus for the forum and its contests. Could this mean that it is about to return, to the joy and relief of SCREAMS!!! addicts? That remains to be seen (as the monkey said after doing his business behind the curtain).

Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that this Pop-Up Contest gives writers a week to present their offerings, instead of the usual 24 hours. My feverish brain wonders whether this indicates a slight retreat from the exhausting business of a daily contest towards a more sensible interval. I can’t help but feel that it was the demands upon energy and creativeness inherent in contests with so short an interval that had something to do with the necessity for a hiatus.

Be that as it may, my previous whining and discomfort at the temporary disappearance of SCREAMS!!! means that I am almost duty-bound to write something for this contest. I don’t have any specific ideas on this at the moment but was given a start by an unusual prompt. This was presented in large red letters as:

W - I - D - E
O - P - E - N.

I took that as meaning I had to devise something that used the letters in some way. I began work on an anagram and came up with a delicious character name that contained huge promise of a seriously “horrorful” tale to follow.

It was only on reading the original post about the Contest for a second time that I realised the prompt was much more straightforward than that. The words meant exactly what they said - that there was no prompt and we were free to come up with any idea as long as it was horror. But the deed had been done and I now had that initial spark that I needed to get my particular show on the road. The story is already well on the way and is titled by the name I came up with in my original misunderstanding of the prompt.

So why am I telling you all this? It is, essentially, a mean psychological trick on my own psyche. By making a big hoo-ha about it, I am forcing myself to complete what has to be a tour de force. The name is so delectable that it demands I write something a bit beyond my usual nonsense and I know this means rather more hard work than I am accustomed to. Now that all two or three of you have read all about it, I have to complete the thing or be condemned as a mere wannabe. It’s called extra motivation.

So keep an eye on SCREAMS!!!, folks, if you want to find out the name that forced me into this position!


Word count: 485