It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
Below is an e-mail I received recently in regards to a contest I entered earlier this year.
Award winning writers
Anyway, here is the e-mail:
Thanks to everybody for waiting so patiently for our contest to wrap up. Winners were announced at the October guild meeting and have been posted to the KWG web site, but I wanted to follow up via email as well for the sake of those who didn’t make it to the meeting and who may not have their eyes trained on the web site. Prizes were awarded as follows:
Leslie Garrett Prize – judged by Michael Knight, Author
1. ) Milk House Water, by Rita Welty Bourke
2. ) A Fine Party, by Phyllis Gobbell
SciFi/Fantasy – judged by Debra Dixon, Publisher, Belle Bridge Books
1. ) Remi Bids Farewell, by Wendy Jo Rogers
2. ) Flight of the Victory, by Zachariah Foster
3. ) The Gersemian Relic, by Jeff L. Horner
Crime/Mystery – judged by Glen Meade, Author
1. ) The Painted Beast, by David E. Booker
2. ) Wheels of Justice, by Robert W. Godwin
3. ) World of their Own, by Mark Freeman
Novel Excerpt – judged by Dr. Alan Wier, Professor of English, UT, Knoxville
1. ) Where You Ought to Be, by Jane Sasser
Creative Nonfiction – judged by John Adams, Author
1. ) True Love, One Story in the Life of an Innkeeper, by Stephanie Levy
2. ) Where There’s Smoke, by Eli Mitchell
3. ) Playing by Ear, by Phyllis Gobbell
Poetry – judged by William Pitt Root and Pam Uschuk, Poets
1. ) Jane Sasser
2. ) Eli Mitchell
3. ) Cathy Kodra
Youth Poetry – judged by William Pitt Root and Pam Uschuk, Poets
1. ) Noah Gurley
2. ) Christian Cain
3. ) Eric Nutter
Youth Fiction – judged by Flossy McNabb, Co-Owner Union Avenue Books
1. ) Melancholy Discord, by Isabel Gellert
2. ) Follow Your Hands, by Vanessa Slay
3. ) Deciding Justice, by Alyssa J. Stewart
Plays – judged by Dr. Deborah Anderson, Professor of Theater, MTSU
1. ) Sold, by Mark McGinley
Thanks for entering the contest. We look forward to reading another great batch of entries next year.
The KWG Contest Committee
www.knoxvillewritersguild.org
Filed under Self-promotion
In case you are thinking about seeing the film, here is a “non-professional” reviewers look at the film.
GRAVITY is every bit as good as you’ve heard. It’s not just a nail-biting thriller, not just far and away the best cinematic depiction of what it’s like to be in space, not just the finest performance ever from Sandra Bullock. Even more important, it introduces new concepts to the language of film: swirling, swooping, gyroscopic curvatures that observe no earthbound rules, that can take you inside a space helmet and out again without cuts or dissolves; the opening shot alone lasts for nearly 13 minutes. They’ll have to invent a new term to describe this constantly malleable point of view. But the story doesn’t stop long enough to let you ponder “how’d they do that?”* For all I know, they built some rockets and shot two game movie stars into Earth orbit. You’ve never seen anything like this. Nobody has.
It’s a howling, crowd-pleasing, eye-popping triumph for director/co-writer Alfonso Cuaron. His resume is…
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Filed under Uncategorized
He didn’t think this was, in any way, horsin’ around.
Mr. Ed had gone out drinking with his friends last night, but work up this morning with a terrible hangover and a skeleton painted on his body. He did not find it funny. It was probably the jack ass next door who did it. Crept over in the middle of the night and painted on him while he was passed out. He’d get even with him. Hey, nobody trifled with him and got away with it. He was nobody’s mule.
Filed under Photo by author, Photo Finish Friday
Leaves in full color /
taste the crisp air of autumn, /
skirt the ground with death.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
By JOE FASSLER
Andre Dubus III, author of Dirty Love and The House of Sand and Fog, explains why the best work happens when you “back the fuck off.”
By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature.
Full article at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/the-case-for-writing-a-story-before-knowing-how-it-ends/280387/
Novelists tend to fall into two camps. Some authors love their outlines—they plot and plan and schematize and think their way through problems. John Irving is one example; he spends months outlining his novels in advance, and when he puts pen to paper, he knows exactly what will happen. Other authors, meanwhile, feel their way through. When they sit down at the desk, anything can happen: They lose themselves in the dark on purpose, and follow the light of strangeness and surprise. Flannery O’ Connor, whose stories revealed their structure over the course of many drafts, worked this way.
The latter approach can sound odd, even shamanistic. What do novelists mean when they say things like my character showed me the way? But my conversation with Andre Dubus III, whose new book Dirty Love is out this week, addressed the challenges and joys of writing without pre-determination. We discussed what it means to write into the unknown, how to do it, and why writers should.
Dirty Love contains four linked novellas about love and betrayal in a coastal town. In the first story, a cuckolded man stalks his wife with a video camera; in the last, a young woman’s world is shattered when a sexually explicit image of her surfaces online. Dubus is the author of books including The House of Sand and Fog (a finalist for the National Book Award), The Garden of Last Days, and Townie. He talked to me by phone from his house north of Boston.
Andre Dubus III: Years ago, I read a book called Letters to a Fiction Writer, which asked about 20 established writers to send their best advice out into the world. There were a lot of heavy hitters in there offering truly wise and helpful advice. But the one that’s stayed with me over the years, from Richard Bausch, has become a sort of mantra for me:
Do not think, dream.
We’re all born with an imagination. Everybody gets one. And I really believe—this is just from years of daily writing—that good fiction comes from the same place as our dreams. I think the desire to step into someone else’s dream world, is a universal impulse that’s shared by us all. That’s what fiction is. As a writing teacher, if I say nothing else to my students, it’s this.
Full article at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/the-case-for-writing-a-story-before-knowing-how-it-ends/280387/
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
The sequestration of the imagination.
Filed under cartoon by author, CarToonsday
A photon checks into a hotel.
The bell hop asks, “Any luggage?”
“Nope,” says the photon, “I’m traveling light.”
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
Time for the monthly installment: New words to live by. This month’s word is an example of a portmanteau word in which two other words are combined to form a new, third word.
The two words used:
Cop, n. U.S. slang for police officer, starting in the 1840 – 50 time frame. Believed to be short for copper, which is also slang for police officer. Believed by some to refer to the copper buttons on police uniforms. More likely a formation of the verb cop (meaning to take or steal, and still in use in phrases such as “cop a plea”) and the suffix -er, turning a verb into a noun, and then later dropped.
Apocalypse, n. originally a prophetic revelation — particularly in Jewish or Christian writings — in which a cataclysm brings about the final clash of good and evil, in which good is supposed to win.
The new word:
Acopalypse, n. A condition in which the truth is never know and the facts are never revealed. This condition can apply to society, to politics, to religion, or to a general feeling is which the trappings of order are maintained, but the actions creating these trappings and even the results flowing from these trappings are absurd. Example: the recent federal government shutdown. Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial could be considered an example of an acopalyptic novel.
[Editor’s note: other new words to live by can be found by clicking on the tag “new word” or “new words.”]
Filed under new word, New words to live by
Elvira: a vixen for Halloween
What would you do with such a writing prompt?
Filed under Writing Prompt
Booker's Blog 