Proud of everyone participating in NaNoWriMo, and very happy for those who are ahead of the word count! I am so far behind! Today shall be spent drinking tea and hot chocolate, and writing. :) Good lucking to all who take up the challenge!

Who is participating in NaNoWriMo? How’s it going?

shannahmcgill:

Yesterday, I got rejected by Space and Time. Soon after the e-mail came in, I took a good, hard look at my short story to see if I could improve anything for the next magazine I submitted it to (Lightspeed Magazine). It mostly looked good, but one thing I noticed was that when I wrote the…

I’m just gonna send this in cause I need someone to test read it :D It’s Marianas Trench fanfiction but it’s not slash and theres no sex or gay actions involved. Also, English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes. :)

Beside you.

It was a night just like any other. Josh was lying on his couch, skipping through the Tv channels. He was dead-tired but couldn’t fall asleep. As always.  Josh was an insomniac and he has been for several years.

When his eyes finally began to close, his phone rang. It was his best friend, Matt. ‘’ It’s  4am. The fuck do you want?’’, Josh said while slowly sitting up on the couch. ‘’I… I have a problem.’’, Matt stuttered. He never stuttered.  ‘’ Well, what is it?’’  ‘’I… My dad is in a coma. He was in an accident. The doctors are not sure.. They don’t know if he’ll make it..’’ Matts voice was shaking. He was probably crying. By now, Josh was wide awake. ‘’That’s horrible! Are you okay? Do you want me to come over? I… I’m so sorry. ‘’  ‘’No, it’s okay. But.. could we meet up later? Maybe for lunch? I need a distraction, I don’t want to think about it anymore.’’ You couldn’t overhear the heaviness of Matts voice, even through the phone.  ‘’Sure.’’, Josh quickly agreed,’’ When and where do you want to meet?’’  ‘’Can you..’’ Matt cleared his throat loudly,’’ Can you pick me up at my place? Around.. 12? I don’t think I can drive anywhere myself.’’  ‘’I’ll be there. Now.. You should get some rest. Have a cup of tea and try to relax, okay? If you need anything, you have my number. Promise to call me if anything’s up?’’  ‘’I promise. See you at lunch. ‘’ Matts voice was still heavy. Understandable, after what has happened.  ‘’ See you then. Good night.’’ Josh hung up. He leaned back and sighed. He knew Matts dad. He was like a second father to him. Everything felt so… surreal. Why him? He certainly didn’t deserve that. He was a great, loving father. He treated Josh as if he was his own son.

Josh stood up. Aimlessly he wandered around in his apartment.  He was tired. He could hear the Tv blaring in the living room. Some life insure ad was on. After a few minutes, Josh found himself leaning against the fridge in the kitchen, sipping Coke Zero. The drink in his hand, he went back to sit on the couch. Standing in the flickering light, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He was shirtless. His stomach, hips and thighs were covered in cuts. Some were fresh, barely healed, others were already scarred over. Unconsciously, his right hand traced the scars on his hip. To him, these scars tell a story. A story that only he himself will ever fully understand. They tell the story of his life. He wasn’t proud of them, but he wasn’t ashamed either. These scars were part of him and if someone didn’t accept them, they were free to leave.

Sighing, Josh grabbed the remote and switched off the Tv. He placed the remote and the coke that was still in his hand on the small couch table in the middle of the room, took his phone, and dragged himself to bed. The only light to guide him was the moon, tenderly shining through the wide glass windows. When he got to his bedroom, he let himself fall onto the big, comfortable bed. He set his alarm for 10am. Meaning, he could still get about 5 hours of sleep.

The next morning. Josh woke up to the steady beeping of his phone alarm going off. In 2 hours he would pick up Matt and they would get lunch. Josh was worried because he wasn’t sure whether he was able to keep the lunch down, and if he wasn’t, how he would explain it to Matt. 

Still sleepy, Josh slowly got up and went to take a shower.  

As the hot water dripped down on him, he closed his eyes. He was still tired and he couldn’t believe what happened to Matt’s dad. Today, he would have to face Matt. Talk to him. Comfort him. Help him. And try not to break down in tears right in front of him. Great.  As if that wasn’t enough already, he would also have to eat lunch with Matt. So there was little to no chance at all for him to bring the food back up and avoid the calories. Even better.

After about 20 minutes, Josh finally got out of the shower. While drying himself with a towel, he felt a sting. ‘’Shit!’’, he whispered, as he saw that one of his cuts from a few days ago had re-opened. He rushed to get a plaster and placed it gently on the dripping wound. It had been one of the deeper cuts on Josh’s stomach and the formerly white towel was now blood-stained.  He looked down to see if maybe other cuts were bleeding too but, luckily, there weren’t.

When he was done cleaning the floor on which little drops of blood had fallen, Josh put on some fresh clothes, threw the towel over the edge of the bath tub, and went into the kitchen. He still had some time to kill before he picked up Matt.

He opened the fridge and closed it again immediately . He didn’t allow himself to eat. It was torture enough for him to have to eat lunch without knowing whether he could purge, or if the calories would sink into his blood stream, making him fat. He wasn’t fat, not at all, but somehow he seemed to think differently. 

Sighing, he sat down at the nice, wooden kitchen table next to the window and looked outside. He has the perfect view of his street. It was an average day. Cars passing, children returning home from school, a guy taking a dog, a Great Dane probably, for a walk. Nothing out of the ordinary, yet Josh could sit and watch these people, this street, for hours. And that, is exactly what he did.

When he looked at the clock, he realized , it was time to get ready. In 10 minutes he would pick up Matt. He grabbed his car keys, house keys, and the little bag he always carried with him, and went outside, into the parking lot.

bookmania:

The Red Edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, applying Stefanie Posavec’s original artwork (bottom) for the Penguin Classics. (via Penguin Classics UK)

intermissionxx:

I need ideas for my Writers Craft class! Can you send me a message, of a social issue you absolutely hate (ex. homophobia, poverty, preserving rainforests, etc.) and an ironic (joke like) solution to the problem. I have a couple ideas, but I want a couple more!

IF YOU DO THIS I WILL RATE YOUR BLOG.

Hey guys, go send this girl your answer! Or send it to us!

Thank you everyone who sent in their writings. We loved them! Sorry we’ve been AFK, life is just crazy busy!

“The Communication Age”

by Reginald Espiritu

    Thus have I heard. On Sunday, Genevieve and Simon went downtown to spend the day together. It was not a date, for neither wanted to call it so. 

    Later that night, Simon typed a sonnet describing how it went:

“Feeling low, I climbed up high to see
If night’s skyline could lift my spirit.
Once when young I was impressed by that scene;
By reason seemed a cure to visit.
Before the trip I researched first,
Excited by the results online.
The sight should be better live, ‘was sure;
Some passion I would finally find.
Arrived at the date, I travelled by car
Up toward where I’d be born again.
I’m told long journeys reap the best reward,
So tell me what to make of this then:
Her silhouette showed no physical change
But a beauty dulled on the hazy stage.”

    He read it aloud to me the next day.
    “Do you want me to respond to it?” I asked afterwards.
    “No,” he said, then added, “Would it be too obvious to call it ‘Mt. St. Genevieve’?”
    I said that it would be. I did not tell him about Genevieve’s e-mail, which was addressed to me and sent at 3 A.M. that morning.

    “Yuri! Sooo, news update. I hung out with Simon…I thought we were just friends, but I’m not really sure anymore. I mean, sometimes I think he still loves me. He takes me out. What am I supposed to think? If he does he’s hiding it quite well. I don’t know…maybe I’m just desperate to get over Arthur. But I don’t know if I can even like Simon, tbh. Hm. Would Simon make a move if he wanted to? I guess I kind of maybe expected it when we stopped by Griffith. Does that mean I wanted him to? I didn’t think I did…I’m a terrible person. Anyway, are we still up for brunch on Wednesday? I’ll just talk to you more about it then. -GL”

    After reading the message, I began constructing a witty opener for my response. Before I could start typing, Simon called, saying he was going to come over and read me his new sonnet.
    “‘Mt. St. Genevieve’ evokes imagery and hints at the subject,” said Simon.
    “What are you going to do when she sees this?” I asked.
    “How do you know she will?”
    “You’re giving it a title. You want to post it.” He sat on my couch, scrolling through his laptop. “You want her to see it.”
    He looked at me, then looked back down at his screen. I stayed silent, allowing time to think. But then I worried that he would start questioning why I was so interested. That worry, though, was brief.
    “We were in my car,” he said. “And I noticed what she was wearing. It was only a few minutes after picking her up, but I swear it was a very impressive dress. It had stripes. If it had an accent it would be a ‘southern twang.’ Does that make sense?”
    No, I did not understand his analogy. But I nodded my head, and he continued his argument.
    “I know Genny doesn’t wear it when she’s with her friends. In fact, I think it might have been new. Or seldom worn. Yeah, the latter. She’d only wear it with me. I have a striped shirt, you know. Looks very similar to her dress.”
    He smiled to himself. “What if I wore it yesterday? Would the serendipity have been creepy or comforting?”
    Mentally, for my two friends, it would be ‘comforting.’
    “Creepy,” I said with a straight face.
    “You don’t believe in soul-mates.”
    “I believe her dress was beautiful, like you say. I will probably always think so.” Genevieve curates her tagged photos well. “And you’ll probably loathe the shirt when she moves away. Can I have it?”
    Simon was not amused. Nor was he upset. It was like he had heard nothing. Simon had San Genevieve blues, and one symptom is deafness. When you fall in love with sweet Genevieve, you don’t ever really fall out. When the time comes for her to move away, she never wants to be the heartbreaker. Breaking hearts is not classy. Instead, she pauses the story, leaving a cliffhanger. You wait in torture for a resolution, because you want to believe it will be good. Simon and Genevieve’s date ended without a resolution. His sonnet says so. Its diction exudes disappointment. So it is not in Simon’s interest to respect reasoning from me. Disillusioned, he plays deaf.

    On Wednesday, Genevieve and I had a late lunch at the Vietnamese noodle place. We ordered without menus. Before the food arrived, we reached the topic of her e-mail. She said she felt disappointed after her date with Simon. I did not say that he was, too. Thankfully, he did not post up the sonnet. Had she read it, she would have no longer felt disappointed.
    We ate in silence, which Genevieve and I find okay. She had just finished recounting her date with Simon. I assumed she was thinking about her story’s implications, because she would only look downwards at her food. And we were eating noodles.
    I looked down, thinking back to two years ago, the time when Simon was more arrogant and Genevieve was more hipster. Simon had just ended relations with a melodramatic actress, who was in all honesty quite vanilla. Genevieve broke up with some Patrick from UPenn. A change of scenery is always nice, so Simon and Genevieve got together. Their coupling received mixed reviews. When they updated their relationship status, it received 49 likes, plus many more invisible dislikes conveyed

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AMUSING THE CHANDLERESS

by Reginald Espiritu

This candle’s going out.




Once tall, now petite.




It burns out of virtue,

Burns for nobody.

The wick was just fine.

The wax, carbon-based.

The chandleress is not to blame

If a taper goes with haste.

In weariness

It pines for work,

A sorry state

That knows its worth

By shrinking down

An end in sight,

By holding out

For dwindling life,

A withered stump

To mourn at night,

The only time

To wish for light.

This candle’s burning out.

Please send in some submissions, the ask box has been fixed! We’d love some of your prompt ideas, your stories, your drabbles, anything! Submit stuff guys!

Love, Tim xo

Write about someone who wakes up on the beach. Did they purposefully sleep there? Maybe the tide pulled them in from a shipwreck. Perhaps they suffer from amnesia and can’t remember how they got there. Are they alone? Focus on their thoughts and actions.

So I have no idea if anyone has sent in messages but our inbox is empty, and we haven’t received anything. I don’t know if there is a glitch or it’s not working, or something. But if you’ve sent something in, I’m sorry we haven’t posted it, but we haven’t gotten it!

- Katie