Prompts 07:50

Today, Tuesday, I decided to move on

There may be flaws in this whole, if examined too closely

Peejay & the Strange Seed

The mouth has slackened, and the chin

It lately happened that I found myself rambling about

We come in peace from the third planet

Trapeze

We brushed the dirt off, held it to the light

Mother Tongue

The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the turf

One Man, Five Days

an ugly, dark monster of a tunnel

and all those buttercups and daisies

When I had been let out at the platform door

We have paid you in the year

I left the place with a heavy heart for a walk all over the town

DO NOT DESTROY

Of what use on earth is a single man?

A was an Archer and shot at a frog

Coming into Chatham

Contraption

I can see back to my very earliest days

She was skilled in music, and the dance

Plain

The seven day war that put the world to sleep

Simple

Ice on the window. the dogs whimper

150th Hit, $5,214

A few more hits for September takes BC earnings to $5,214 for the year

Some of these you will have seen, newest at the bottom

SEPTEMBER

138 TomC Poem at Mythic Delirium
139 Alex makes final in Glimmer Train with "My Son, Going Under"
140 Jason Jackson story at Liars League
141 TomC gets a story at Liar's League
142 Joel 1/2/3 Results TBA in good Comp Individual Totals (??? $$$)
143 Matt at "Bound Off" with "In response to Your Presentation"
144 Lexie 5th place at Writers Bureau ($100)
145 DMW places paradise Lost at Black Ink ($10) Print
146 TomC places "Carnival of the Animals" at Clockwise Cat
147 "Rupert Merkin" places "Final Rest" at Paper mag Nossa Morte ($40)
148 "Louise Cypher" places "A Warm Touch" at web mag "Coven of Shadows"
149 Louise Cypher story into Coven of Darkness
150 Jason Jackson 2nd in National Writing Comp (Durham) $200

Prompts Thursday 07:40

The winter sun creeps into the cracks between stones

How would you have met me?

A Standard Life

Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip

Shit!

He knew he was the wrong listener

Three Kings, 2007

Blessed are, blessed are, blessed are

CHUNK

I saw three ships go sailing by

OK, Let's go, me and you

What could be hurting so much

Let's mock the great and good, stick pins in Mother Theresa

The northern sky rose high and black

There was this man and he was the strongest

And the day was plucked and tasted bitter

He gritted his teeth like a cliff

All the women in the world could not move him

Grandfather's Watch

Eyeless and mouthless

Her promises took the top off his skull

A dull axe chunking in a dark wood

He loved her and she loved him

despite everything, morning comes

Safe and sure for ever and ever

One man, a deserted platform

Waiting, while she brushed her hair

Kettle

Love will pass, good will come

New Blood

Welcome Wayne (and thank-you to the recommending writer) our latest recruit, poor soul. Wayne joins Margot, with us just three weeks and says (to the bewer newbie: "Ive written more and learned more in this three weeks than in the previous three years."

if you're interested in Boot Camp this is a good time to join. We have two newbie BCers, two more who have nbeen with us just a couple of months. I promise blood, sweat and tears (etc)

Prompts Tuesday 07:55

The boy, fine in his desire, feeble in his grasp

JULY

You'll need your passport

Jigger-Jagger

He'll spend his life in the busy pit

January

They're sending in their regional inspector

Just

The risky fleeing and the rope breaking

Jimmy Brown

Call our new number, shown here

Jack & Jill

There are worms in the dark recesses of my gut

Jennifer Eccles and Her Sisters

If undelivered return to

Jesus Smith

The thrill that runs through my head like a neon filament

Jaguar

Two tablets left

Juniper

Two lips that would drink from love itself

Jelly & Blancmange

As simple as squeezing you between these two fingers

Jumping Jacks

Saving lives is against orders

Jankers

The owl-faced schoolmaster behind his desk

Juggernaut

How to drive a bayonet through the gut

Jam

The patented shit-mop

Jumper, Cardigan

How many times have you eaten here before?

Jones's Problem

All other taxes and duties are unchanged

Monday Prompts 07:40

Come on then, my sweet, let's be cruel tonight

telephone! Telphone for McTravers!

We close the door, shut out all sound

Various problems with the penis

Peek-a-boo

You set the olives down beside the feta

I am the scent of a feather falling from the sky

LEATHER

The funeral empties every farmstead, every farm

Like water finding its level, like dying

GRAPES

She sucked the happiness from his life and left him flaccid

MOUSE-TRAP

Ripped the heart to bloody gobbets

Love: Modern Theories and Criticism

She has child-bearing thighs and lungs full of dust

BERI-BERI

Her voice on the phone from a far country

Intelligence and Women: A Short Book

If I could run a mile

From Merseyside, I reckon

There's plenty of maintenance going on

Friday Prompts 0800

In the night each one of us is alone

That fucking armadillo

The book still rests in the palm of your hand

Is this acceptable?

The blind scraps are inter-weaving

Groaning, as though he was hauling the whole earth

Lashing

Tea? Coffee? Knife in the back?

The hens scattering across the yard

A thorn in the side of our field

By whose ordinance?

The bitch's heart pounds in her black chest, a hammer in the ears

Network

Until your sudden smile lingers and holds

Without the towers

A table with its shadows rises from the dust

My lover was a wonderer

Higher than the gull and the bite of the brine

Feeling the too-blue blaze of noon

They were fleeing from the bull of Bryncelyn

When the sun's on the mountain

If you ever sleep in a grave

Wheeling, and wheeling, and wheeling

Geese goose-stepping in terror, their hissing peevish from the sedges

Tugged on a tether, to the timid heifer

prompts, Thursday 07:55

He strode young, into the landscape of old age

Waiting for the call

A miracle, waking every morning

I like pie. She likes pie. Do you like pie?

To Serve Them All My Days

And arriving with the light, there she is

The rickety footbridge

Nearby a girl sits on a tombstone

It might be Thursday

Words, words, words remain

It's not an Armadillo

Microsoft

Love's knotted under her apron now

Opening a tin of beans with a banana

Welcome to the service desk

The Special One

Six bundles, brown and vulnerable

She is able to leave her other self behind

and her hair balled tightly under her cap

Everything closes in

I think of how I lay here as a lad

BREW

The evening light falls

CHISEL

After a hammering of light

I am close to my people, the smell of wet wool

CHECK

The cafe owner, an Italian

Left but not sinister

Boot Camp Keegan was formerly on ezboard but has been migrated to YUKU

At the moment YUKU does not have a delete membership function that works.

This means, currently, that if a membership lapses or someone actually leaves, I have to BAN them!

So please if you've temporarily left and you return to find yourself "banned" it's just an admin thing


Alex

Prompts Wednesday 10:10

From the mists came sounds of moving

But is it an Armadillo?

The mansion claimed by clambering bramble

Martin Evans

Steamrollering over a life already extinguished

No one lives in Bettws now

A breath-taking whiteness of flowers, flowers

Sewage & Water

A green lad from the life-spring of his home

Zydol

The whole of doghood I have seen in my time

The rejoicing of waters

Danger, Existentialists operate in this area

The dog ate the contract

Were you ever a stranger in these parts?

He said he was a poet

Extra for cash

He was sitting on a bench at the foot of Moel Cadwgan

Bethel is between the slagheap and the factory

Twisted, bitter, and long-living

This is the first time I've seen a song

I daresay death was no more than a gentle subduing

Sexually Explicit, and Broccolli

His great-great-grandfather came from Wales

In the restaurant at the sea's edge

Sunday Promptsat 0900

Pick up a copy

There are things I cannot prove

I have to do this

One day Robert-Robert awoke with a cold.

The doctor has warmed the speculum in her latex-gloved hand

It is clear we are at a crossroads

I remember your fat, blubbery shoulders, the freckles, the way you swam slowly

Zulus boxed in their glass cases

When I am asked I say I'm a quiet lad. I pick no fights.

There are more pigs than people

The first time I saw Annie

Sure, there are minor inconveniences

New York City all the way

She's so close the air feels compressed

A lonely old mother died and left her sprawling house to her twin daughters, Chalk & Cheese.

A row of white crosses

Once upon a time, a single language

Picture me resplendent

The school sat among maples on a hillside

My mother is sleeping

I think I'm still pretty good-looking, considering, I mean.

Contrary to popular belief, people think during sex

I've made the final cut.

Cold. Grey dawn breaking in a thin, silver line


The first picture is of oak trees in spring.

So, apart from a couple of hitches, Plan A was working out fine.

I learned to write in school five years before they came.

We sized each other up and decided to be best friends.

Always be aware of your hair.

Saturday Prompts 07:20

She is perfectly acceptable. I am afraid of her

On Turds

There was a man who Sorrow made his friend

Seven Types

Some knives are beautiful

George

I passed along the water's edge

Love, Sex & Tragedy

How shit dissolves

We will moor our loney ship

Riding the Yellow Trolley Car

Big, black and very alpha-Dog

Come near, come near, come near

The Black Pick-Up

Owain was ill today, and tonight, delirious

Go there and light a fire

The mathematics of sunshine

We who are old and gay, old and gay

Pointing at us with a black stick

The brawling of martins in the rooftops

Listen, darkness is dripping

Pen, Pencil, ruler, divider

I am sitting in a strange room, listening

There was a girl riding a white pony

Service desk edition

You ask how it is. I will tell you

There was a black hill I knew. Known as Aber Mountain

Listening for the wrong baby

Stats Update

I think I mentioned we have a BCer 1/2/3 in a comp shortly to be announced, so more pennies won, and I may have mentioned newbie Matt Plas with his second hit since joining BC, at "Bound Off"

Need to add Dan who has a paying print pub in BLACK INK

and Lex who picks up $100 for 5th in a comp.

That takes hits for the year up to 145 and payments through the $5,000 barrier.



BCers have got lazy reporting their publications but from what HAS been reported we've crept up to 73 known this year, the latest, Tom and RVJ in print mag Parameter.

Friday Prompts 0845

The Bad Joke gene

This was your place of birth. This daytime place

Black was the without eye, black the within tongue

Rocks, Moss, stonecrop, iron

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land

Screaming for blood, crusts, anything

The woman in the kitchen making tea

Are you prepared for what the night may bring?

See the life stab through, a dream flash

The game is finished when he plays his ace.

He tried a step, then a step, then a step

Turn out the light and I'll explain

How strange it is to have a loveless heart

Herded mountains, steaming

The word inside the word, unspoken

Kick up the fire, let the flames break loose

The bullet oozes from the gun

To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk

After knowledge you expect forgiveness?

Don't talk to me of love, I've had an earful

Yellow smoke creeping to these windows

A soft October night

Full of high sentences but a bit obtuse

Have the memories rearrange to fit the mood

The Town Clock. Drunk in Residence, Creative Writing Class

It hurts

Laughter tinkles among the teacups

Strode across the hills and smote them

He was much possessed by death, but hearty for all that

It's something you say at your peril

Thursday 0720

Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.

Are you not afraid they will misunderstand?

The jurisdiction thing was borderline.

While we eat we think.

We approached our last house high up on the hill.

Busy old fool.

A sunrise does not last all morning.

BEEP!. …. …. …. … beep.

We sang at castle walls

She lay down, naked in the curtained bedroom, thinking.

Pantomime.

One night I woke from a dream of peace.

Don't say shirt-lifter.

He had my heart. I have his in a jar.

A shoe hitting the table.

He was as suspicious as a rat near strange bread

She wondered what Tom would be up to, right now.

Anemone

Dead friends like jewels in my hand.

Dog

She is, in fact, exquisite.

Some of the accidents really looked like an accident.

December, still, trees.

She might have been the love of his life. Might have been.

Tuesday Prompts 1655

I have eaten the plums

There is a garden at the heart of things

She walks in beauty, like the night

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore

Death did not come to my mother like an old friend

Will you walk a little faster?

So I took her to the river

Come lovely and soothing death

They arranged things so they never met.

Dirty little coaster

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight

He always tucked his daughter up at night

Up! Up! And quit your books!

My lover has bad manners when in bed

He was a deaf-mute beggar with a black beetle body

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough

The bars are only available in a kit

Did you ever see a goat so big?

A clown and ragged dandy

Porthcawl

We heard his musical gurgle approaching

Sacré Bleu!

This is a strange music

Dealing, administration and clearing, as appropriate

Tuesday Prompts 0730

And the last sound, your father arriving home late, late
Letters
We talked in spurts, in desperate whispers
Camera
You look at them flashing their indicators
Egg
I have fallen. I am somewhere between melancholia and frenzy
Nikon
Every day is a fresh beginning
Tomorrow
While the cars and the taxis and the lorries go by
SNIP!
I don't know when I'll get to London
The dogs are barking
It made me suicidal just remembering E.H.
The School-Run
The burnt-out ends of smoky days
I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three
And then the lighting of the lamps
A South Wales Argus came swirling, about my feet
A Royal Disaster
I cannot endure this hideous, wicked, stupidity
Lay your head upon my shoulder
A chocolate Brillo Pad, pink custard
Our president is a disaster. The next will be worse.
Cheap Cheep
Who cares what they say of you after your dead
Before me a wall, high, insurmountable
There are protests everywhere
Don't always be a thought ahead
She is so desperately frail and old, but still interested
Out of step
They build the world of love from sex, after-the-fact
I've finished a joke Mexican novel
The girls arrive in their belted mackintoshes
Reading Banville

Monday Prompts 15:42

It's going to be very terrible, Rabby.

Rear Window

I love you. That's the main thing.

If people turned to stare at me in streetcars.

I arrived yesterday afternoon on what turned out to be the last plane.

I have never been a monk,

Everything looked normal.

Unfurl the bed, vacuum the sheets, pretend nothing happened.

Sabbath.

I saw a huge silver bomber, low and slow just wandering around.

I travelled penniless.

I have your little passport picture in my purse.

If this sounds like a poem.

She dreamt she was eating a giant marshmallow

Here, take my last black tulip

Choke

The Derby game against Wednesday is Nottingham on Thursday

I do not know who lied, but I lied.

I met my heart in the hospital museum

My father and all his tobacco

I almost love them; they are my children.

I have been dead already. It is dark.

The moving finger writes and having writ can always be tippexed out.

I shall persist.

Monday Prompts 7:16

When I stepped, at the hour of sunrise, out of doors

Why such harsh machinery?

It is l'heure bleu

Vanity keeps prodding us to lift ourselves skywards

I managed to mend the lawn-mower

Give me the lover who yanks open the door

VULTURE

Nothing teaches me not to miss my mother

STICK

The whole thing disgusts me. Fuck it.

In my opinion, which is very old-fashioned

TEA

You think of looks always in relation to sex

Chin up, duck! There are always people worse off

COFFEE

Tell me just how fucking good I look

A kind of brown. Sad.

ARSENIC

But I was joyless, uncosy, the stern daughter

From the window I saw horses

TRUMPET

Now there is nothing to think about except Vietnam

Because one feels, sees, and must speak

PICKLE

Please find enclose one registration certificate

I caught an amazing fish

Sunday Prompts at 2111

Mother, may I?

An old man sits netting

From a train, boys in a field

This road holds no surprises

I remember thick cream, purloined from silver milk-churns

The president presumes all Americans are moral imbeciles

He chucked it all in, just left one day.

Punnets

I have abandoned the dream kitchen for a low fire

Let me describe it

They are fourteen weeks on Tuesday

A woman drawing, light

SKUA

Cowslip, Marsh Mangold, a boot

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes

Blackberries

Nobody in the lane and nothing, nothing but blackberries

Every year you said it wasn't worth the trouble

It is a recommended exercise, bitter homework.

They will try to silence the press.

It is perfectly all right to continue killing those gooks

Betsy, I am tired.

Here, one can see Oliver Reed's testicles impaled

Since it is absurd to weep, I can only laugh.

Prompts 1925 Sunday

and the stars and the angels

we were children, not lovers

Translated from the polish

Once in a room in Blackpool, we

My wife, combing her hair

idiots, feeling safe, holding nothing back

Uncertainty is more beautiful, still

For some reason, there is a camel in the dining-room

There would have been signs, signals

I look at lamplight through the leaves

A man eating soup

She lay on the carpet, plumped out

in this strange quiet

My mother bought a piglet, my father, a pig.

He has dangerous tools in bulging pockets

Remembering Gravity

Batman

I have had worse partings

Prompts 1716 Sunday

It was Union Square, I remember.

Perhaps you'll tire of me.

There is a kind of love called maintenance

That fucking Hemingway

Quiet, by the window of a train

If you were to read my work; all of it I mean.

I give the secret sign.

Of Onions.

You are the bread, the wine, the knife.

I would thank you not for a Valentine

Wallet

Every time I play solitaire my partner beats me

I simply could not be a good army wife

Less than a pound in change

Seeing you make me want to lift up my top

I am breaking in the new maid for the master of the house

Quiet, drinking wine together, one smokes

I remember the nights and the sound of nights

I look at the mountains. Everything seems flat by comparison

By this axe

Thou shalt know my chosen by their ASBOs

Oh Allen, come and hold my hand.

As far as I know they were working in France.

Darling we've been out a little longer than Columbus

They eat sand eels

Prompts 1445 Sunday

Bloody men

Let me never be a father

Single, Ticket

Exactly what I am

He burst from the cake, naked

He was captured in the valley of the women

Jenkins, all too clearly it is time.

Pinnochio

It was late September, wet

I had just poured a glass of wine

It was then that I started to scream.

In the park, daffodils

He put one hand on my manuscript, the other down my dress

BLOOMERS

When I was young I believed in intellectual conversation

A good-looking secretary, blonde

CHICKEN

The groans men use

BLACK

Smooth as a swan, and as vicious

RED

Prompts 1300 Sunday

When I was twelve I used to lie on a church roof and look at curtains

Now let him go to sleep with history

He assumed he would, someday

I am NOT frantic, or doubting, or hysterical

Stinking of gasoline

There has been a lapse of two hours

Afternoon light slices down, and her in two

Silver-black cars

I could so easily terrify you and turn you away

Morris, dancing.

Let us compare our mythologies

MARMITE

The diary of a 42-year-old Norwegian salesman

11p

He has been walking a long time

I hear a man climb our stairs and cough as he passes

You must be happy

Crumbling cities and galloping horses

I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap.
I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me.

Define, "Maiden".

Her name I may or may not have, made up

Motor

It is very ordinary, and very moving

Spender

If your neighbour disappears

Sparrow

I will not hold my breath

Death by egg-whisk

Black Dog, Red Dog

You have lovers, many, nameless

I think everything seems harder than it really is

A man carries a bundle of firewood along a path

Prompts 0830 Sunday

There's an awful lot of God in the ordinary bloke

David, David, you couldn't have been named anything else, could you?

At noon, in the dead centre of a faith

It is so lovely and so right.

Plague victims catapulted over castle walls

I am in my workroom but there is no question of work.

A cow and her two calves.

I do not know how to think or what to think.

When I put my ear to the hole.

The unread mail, the patients.

Maud went to college.

First I worked for Hopkins, then there was that book.

The wind, turn your back and push.

I think Ernest was something I deserved.

You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies.

My mother said once: When you were young, you killed small things.

The Green Man on Hello Street.

And now I will finish this long story.

One night the tide went out, and didn't come in.

1,124 nights.

I must remember where I lay.

It was written on top of my slavery.

The brave do not have to be cruel. They can be gentle.

His name was Robbie Cox, a butcher's son

Light splashed this morning

Prompts 0600 September 9th

There was once another country

Barrels of chains

Darling this letter is secret equals US Top Secret

Families, Tribes, Nations

Something unbelievable has happened. I have fallen in love.

Bracken, Gorse

The Radio station is filled with goats

It starts in the pub, in a back room

I know so little about all this, due to my failed and sheltered life.

Not even bishops

Bewildered, frightened, rather wobbly.

Severn drunks talking

Four days later I am able to sleep again (via Secconal)

The time of fools is coming

Tell me lies about Vietnam

I am elated and in despair

Take a length of steel

Could you kill a man? Eventually...

A bird, no song

I did not have to make any excuses or say anything

Not in the top ten

Near the fickle Post Office

From Israel, hoping.

I am irrevocably opposed to marrying anyone

Saturday Morning Prompts

The season turned like the page of a glossy magazine


Hell is a kitchen


Everything looks too beautiful for me


A man who wears corduroy


Man, dolphin


I never saw such a place anywhere


Oyster cocktail


All afternoon, through the tall heat


Telephone


Night before last I went. by full moon, on a ship to Kotor.


The ache of marriage


Welcome to Cheese


The Copper IUD


First, are you our sort of person?


Thirty-six years to the day, after our wedding


£19:99


Think of coming in, on an absolutely still, flat sea.


We should get a room, somewhere to iron


I did it. I did it. I did it.


Before I was a virgin, I...


If I was somebody else, I'd ring me.


How deep?


When I was in Bled.

Friday's Prompts, and Stuff

Boot Campers are playing catch-up after the school holidays so have set themselves daily writing targets and daily "writing-before-we-log-on" targets.

I have to log on to post prompts etc but once this is done I disappear until I have written 500 words or a complete flash.


BYE!


Prompts


About two nights ago I found myself with four or five of them


SALT


Now is poised above time


The Hell with the dogwood


SUGAR


Nothing whatever is by love disbarred.


Sherry


All the trees (named flamboyante) are scarlet


Perfume, for a briefest moment


Climbing the style with the girls


Black


Women in light summer dresses


If it was grey


And were we innocent then?


When I'm among a blaze of lights


After a while it seems too goddam silly to eat


With tawdry music and guitars


Ths social life here is limited but odd.


And women dawdling through delights


Pelota is the best ball game I ever saw.


And officers in cocktail bars


The Mood Watch


The Car hire office was closed.


Brown-orange, artificial


Chesepeake

NEW MEMBERS, Kingfisher Barn Course

We have one member now with us 6 months, two with us less than that many weeks, and a brand-new newbie shivering in the corner. This is a good time to join Boot Camp. Newbies bring energy and remind those here slightly longer that they really HAVE got better.

Incidentally six-month man has now had half a dozen hits and one very good prize and one of the 6-8 week guys has had two hits, one paying.

Contact alex.keegan at btinternet.com or answer here.



PS There is a face to face course at Kingfisher Barn, Newbury

01 November Thursday
02 November Friday
03 November Saturday
04 November Sunday

05 November (Monday available if anyone needs follow-up work)

The first two days do not expect any prior knowledge (of KB Courses) then we roll into a tough weekend. Newbies thus do 4 days. Monday is available


Alex

Thursday Prompts

You will be happy to know that in the Hausa language "Oho" means "Who cares?"

Manhole

She is smaller than you and weighs about eighty pounds

This is not chick-lit

The airplane has rendered land travel extinct

Ladder

Her husband, a brutal man, gave her syphillis as a wedding present when she was 18.

xxx

How can I escape from this boring, scrofulous layer of white civilisation?

Colander, sieve

How can I get a sense of country?

Razorbills, Shags, Guillemots.

We have tested and tasted too much, lover.

NUT

Her attitude to and about God somewhat chills me.

The dry black bread and the sugarless tea

Last night I finished "Out of Africa".

Ken is doing the levels.

The Happiness Self-Assessment Form

For the difference that sets an old phrase burning.

Oyster

Mexico is almost totally corrupted now.

Tuesday's prompts

Paparazzi people

Red - the colour of blood, not of roses

Hurricane!

Becoming a ghost before he's gone

The first day of term

Cary Grant and spinach pasta

Return to Sender

Lady in Cement

Father Figure

Unmissed, Unmourned

I love you when you're sick

A padded silk headboard

Feeling at Home

Monday's Prompts

Why don't we say goodbye right now, pretending we are well

It was in those days when I wandered about hungry

Facts, stories. repeated rumours and gossip

Like in "On the Beach"

I hear a clock strike six downstairs

Marvellous, the rain pattering on the roof.

You wil be able to sort it out, of course

As soon as i opened my eyes I started wondering

I am not dispassionate

They have killed you over many a night, when they were younger

Good Friday, after consuming copious amounts of a port-type wine

I started reading the ads over the door

Please note carefully, the last sentence of their letter regarding unauthorised connections

There are American refugees

I opened the window and looked out

Once we had enormous moral credit

It had been going steadily downhill for me all along

There is no God who saves Americans

The air was filled with voices

Everything looks too beautiful to me

I am going to write bits of conversation as I remember them

Critique Central!!

8 stories posted Friday night or Saturday morning

45 critiques already, 80 discussion posts

alx

How Tight Do You Write?

I can often cut a BCer's story by 50% but my own stuff starts out much tighter (he said).

But two recent comps demanded specific word-counts. I reduced one "FINISHED" 35660-word stroy to 2,995 and a 2250 story to 1500. Both those stories I was happy with before the cut, but I now think they are improved.

It's a good exercise when a story has been tightened well enough to send out to look again and ask just how few words could this story be told in. Sometimes a much-tightened story still feels like the same story only tighter, but sometimes the new, slimmer piece feels like a fresh story.

Years ago, a raw writer I had a story "Postcards From Balloonland" which was a monster 5,800 words. I trimmed it to 4,999 and made the last 150 in The Ian St James Awards but then Cosmo had a comp and I reduced that 5K to 1,999 words (TOO stripped out IMO).

I then "let-out" the 1,999 words to 2,150, won $1,000 and published the story 4/5 more times.



More or less (but this isn't absolute) if you can say the same thing in less words, the short version will have more power and resonate more.





alx

Three More Hits, Another Prize

September is another "Blast" month.

We've started with eight fresh stories (25 critiques already) and three hits


Jason & Tom have stories being performed by Liars League and Joel (on these boards as a BC virgin earlier this year) is first, second, or third in a larger competition, results TBA later in the year.


Our 142nd hit in 2007, our 51st prize in 2007



Alex