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 |   Enga mellom fjella: where from across the meadow, poems sing from mountains and molehills. |
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Enga mellom Fjella  Sentinel Marked as if you own me I bow before the Bitterroots and just like you my rocky soil, my withered grass lays prey to the empty sky. © Kåre Enga 2007 "Sentinel"   Reader's Choice of Poems: "Sentinel" "In Lagada, la vita" "Tales told over scones and hot tea" "For Jeanette ... when she grows old" "Mauve Mavis" Reader's Choice of blog entries from my old blog "L'aura del Campo" :"Death of Jeannie New Moon" "Winter: 18 Mas'il (December 29)" "When is it proper to tell someone you love them?" "Holy day. Autumn in November. A mole." "Poems inspired by maps. Remember 1963?" FACES     PLACES            Kåre  Enga~ until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. ~ Elizabeth Bishop The Fish |
I wish I had a magic wand and a magic carpet. And a housekeeper. Yeah, that would be nice. And someone to wake me up in the morning with coffee. 
The trick with a story using a cliche is to make it not cliche. CinderElla has been done. So has HarryP. What if the magic wand is disguised as a hair brush or a mop (especially if the person in need doesn't like to mop). Or a toy holding a toy wand (hide it in plain sight). Or a pencil, pen, or weird looking stick. If a vacuum cleaner can fly like a broom, what modern item sitting around the room can be used like a wand? Gamers should have a suggestion or two. The youth or child or unicorn or gorilla handling a wand needn't have the same wish that a middle-aged writer does. Does a bigfoot wish for rain; does a bear wish for snow; does a fairy wish for new wings like a butterfly? Is the wish granted or does something better happen instead. Can the wand be used on others but never on oneself or vice versa? Is it alive and true to itself or to the person wielding it. Remember: simple sentence structure (ix-nay on subordinate clauses); simple words (but a couple new and difficult ones are fine); use all the senses and for sight remember that size and shape and interesting colors matter (anyone who loved their big box of crayons knows what I mean; many kids know their colors!); keep sentences short and simple; get rid of 'is' unless it's a picture book... and even then... action is better ... 'Petra ate the purple pear'; alliteration, rhyme and rhythm can help even in a short story. It's a great tool for memorization. Most of WDC is middle-class American and seemingly loves to write stories about their own upbringing or fantasies placed in England and Ireland (having never been there). They neglect the child with roots in Jamaica or Pakistan living in Birmingham or Sheffield or the one in Wexford eating her mother's pierogi or the children down the street or on the other side of town who have different names and different dreams. Write for them (but be culturally sensitive). 1880s England and 1950s America have been overdone and frankly, neither reflects 2020s reality. Blue-eyed Sally is a well worn. If you have children or grandchildren in your life write and read to them. If you don't... borrow some (make sure you give them back)! It's not like I'm a great storyteller, but I've won this contest a couple times. WDC writers should easily be able to knock me off my pedestal, so have at it.  Cubboo! won't mind if she gets 10-15 entries. With that many there should even be a couple good enough to nominate for a Quill Award.  I'm not saying this is great writing but it was good enough to win 1st place in December 2020 (because you didn't enter!). Note the use of rhythm and rhyme.
This was a different type of prompt (first chapter) and an older age group.
A three way tie for first but I'll still cherish it. There were quite a few entries. Notice the age group. One can check on-line. Teddy tested as 4th grade.
https://readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php I checked a sample of text (highlighted in navy above); it tested as 8th-9th grade. This can be helpful if you are writing for a 7 year old or MG or even YA. ~600 words Posted in "Blogville " |
| Advice from Sorji's New Book is Out! in "Happy October!" : Remember kids, don't delete unused writing. Just copy and paste it ... Exactly what I do.  I tend to keep stray thoughts and ideas on paper and in random places here. They can come in use. I've also copy-pasted my long blog comments and then made them into a blog entry of my own. I seldom throw anything away.  Rather than start a new project I'll be rereading and editing past projects. Because many are separate stories within a 'world' I may even have to print them out to make sense of what order they need to be put in. I also need to look through old journals as some are still on paper... somewhere. Lots of work. If I start now I might make good progress by end of December. My unfinished list of unfinished works: Stories: Hourglass (Oriole) Season of Mountains Weeping Blood of the Garlic (Ajo, Meadowlark, Thoom, Bawang ...) Os vampiros não vivem em Evora (João} Ao Hanuda Space Cadet (Kat, 90210, S.C....) Poems: Flowers of Frida Kahlo There comes a softening... Zmitri Gzaibun I haven't revisited some of these in years. I wonder what I've left off these lists; but, copy, paste. ~200 words Posted in "Blogville " 57.743 |
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