Archive | March 2013

Weblit Wednesday: a Guest Post on Poetry for the Masses!

Mar6

This is a guest post by [personal profile] thesilentpoet

In a way, the Poetry for the Masses! project started in 2010, when trying to raise money to attend a conference in Minneapolis, I hosted a poetry drive on my journal. While never consistent until recently,
I would occasionally resurrect it. In 2012, having renamed it to be Poetry for the Masses!, I started it for what I thought would be a one-off thing, instead, it’s become a semi-monthly event, with calls
for prompts, perk lists, and freebies.

It was through Poetry for the Masses! that Silk Road Allies, the shared world between myself, Elizabeth Barrette, and Marini Bonomi, started. Over the course of the several months, I’ve written poems on
such subjects as fairy tales and folklores, religious traditions, science, and history. In addition to Silk Road Allies, I also frequently write poems regarding to my larger and longer crowdfunded project, Sixty-Four Squared, a tentatively five-novel project, which is directly written and linked to through my journal. Currently, I am still writing my way through Book the first, The Scholar’s Mate. In Poetry for the Masses!, I also frequently dip into Schrodinger’s Heroes, another shared world co-created by Elizabeth Barrette. However, there are many stand alones, and I always love new prompters, commenters, or supporters. All the poetry written during the Poetry for the Masses! sessions are on a pay-what-you-will, with donor perks typically starting at as low as the $5 level.

I had started Poetry for the Masses! again because I needed something to kickstart my writer brain, having just come out of a too long for liking dry spell. I keep continuing it as it connects me to a
fantastic community of writers, poets, and artists, working to create a community where we can all learn and share. I hope to continue it for a long time to come.

The next Poetry for the Masses! will be the weekend March 8-9 with a theme of “rebirth”. Please follow along at http://thesilentpoet.dreamwidth.org or http://thesilentpoet.livejournal.com. Prompts welcome, comments gleed upon, and tips certainly welcome.

Thank you, good-bye, and good night.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/487329.html. You can comment here or there.

Pi No Wri Mo: Day Four

Mar6

Yesterday I wrote 1537 words of Addergoole and 566 words of Other.
This brings my totals to 6127 (par 6000) and 1925 (par 2000) going into today.

If I wrote 125 words less of Addergoole and 125 words more of Other today, I would be at par for both.

Last words of last night, Other:
“Trees have a different sense of brief than we do?” Aoife shrugged. “I don’t have training in xenobotanical ambassodorial duties.”

Last words of last night, Addergoole:
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough, when she knew she could have been locked in a basement. “I’ve got to go see Arundel.” If she whispered quietly enough, her voice didn’t hurt people.

~~

Other news:

I am still plodding along on my last Giraffe Call!! Because I haven’t gotten through the first round of prompts yet (I was sick 🙁 ), prompts are still open!

And at $17.50 in donations, we are $12.50 from a hot cocoa recipe and $22.50 from donators getting another fic written!

And in health news, I’m feeling better! (mostly)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/487052.html. You can comment here or there.

Post-Apoc Studies 101, a continuation from the January Giraffe Call (@rix_scaedu)

Mar5

To Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of this unnamed fragment from the Jan. Giraffe Call.

“You don’t think the things you learned in your human school will be useful?” Tomas was looking around, pacing around, sniffing the air.

“Well. Why am I going to need to know history now? Or literature?”

“Hrmph.” He sat down with a thump. “Because you will need to remember the past. Don’t you people have a quote about that?”

“Those who don’t remember the past, I think.”

“Are doomed to repeat it. yes. You’re going to want to remember that information, so you can share it.”

“If the world depends on me remembering my 9th grade global studies, we’re screwed.”

“Surely you remember one thing.”

“Ninety and ten. And irregular coastlines.”

“Explain.”

She stirred the heating soup with a chopstick. “In developing countries, especially with , um, bad leadership-“

“Dictators?”

“Those. Ninety percent of the wealth is held by ten percent of the people.”

“So they’re controlling everyone else with their wealth. How does that help you here?”

“Well, I don’t have any wealth, and I don’t know where the people are with wealth.”

“But that’s what you need to find. Wealth, or people with wealth.”

“You want me to be a dictator?”

“Better than being dictated to.” He grinned at her cheerfully. “At least, in my book. So what’s wealth?”

“Money.” Duh… She was surprised to find him shaking his head at her. “What?”

“Money is what you use to buy wealth. What good is a bunch of paper?”

“It buys stuff from… damn. Okay. But the guys who had all the money before, they can have supplies, and probably full roofs, and all that stuff.”

“So that’s a good place to start. Supplies and a roof are wealth.”

“Supplies and a roof. Check. Wait. So, people who had money might have wealth, right?”

“Right. In the world we were living in, money was almost the same as wealth.”

“You know a lot for a hobo.”

“You know enough to know that I’m not a hobo.”

“Yeah, but I’m having a hard enough time dealing with everything else that happened right now. Dealing with the fact that you’re a 300-year-old fairy is just too much.”

“That is fair. Back to your lessons, then, and I believe your can of foodlike stuff is burning.”

“Caramelizing.” She stirred it carefully. “So, right now, wealth is ‘things people need and want.’ Okay. So, I don’t want to be poor. And I really am, right now. We are, unless you have a lot more up your sleeve than I think you do.”

“We’re rather poor right now. But. Did you take physics, did your school teach such a thing?”

“Physics? Yeah.” She stirred her food again, wondering where this was going.

“So you understand the idea of potential energy, yes?”

He was sounding less and less like a hobo every minute. “Yes. Like a ball at the top of a cliff has a lot of potential energy.”

“So what we are sitting on, my dear student…” He sounded positively Giles, now, as he sat a pebble on the edge of their rooftop campground, “is a great deal of potential wealth. And all it needs is a little shove.”

Armona watched as he tipped the pebble off the edge.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/542328.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/486742.html. You can comment here or there.

Pi No Wri Mo: Day Three (Yesterday)

Mar5

Okay!

Yesterday I wrote 1540 words of Addergoole and 542 words of Other.

This brings me to running totals of 1359 other [goal: 1500] and 4590 Addergoole [goal: 4500].

I’m wondering if I set my sights a little too high and should drop the “Other” to 250/day.

How about you?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/486425.html. You can comment here or there.

Enough Warning, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@RealBriGang)

Mar4

For [profile] realbrigang‘s prompt. Thanks to @inventrix and @dahob for the names.

By most measures, they’d had enough warning.

They’d gotten enough advance notice, between Iesult’s spotty and erratic future-seeing and Gerauld’s contacts in the government, to know when things were going to go weird. They’d had enough time to hit the stores before everything was stripped down to lime juice and off-brand saltines. They’d even had enough time, in part due to Khalim’s money-market philandering, to get a cabin off in the middle of nowhere and stock it up.

They’d had enough time to get themselves safe, in other words. They had time to warn their friends and family, in vague or concrete terms, depending on whose kin and kin, and how close they felt to them. They had time to get five of their closest to a nearby cabin, even.

Compared to most of the world, they’d had more than enough warning. By the time the city they’d been living in was rubble, they’d been settled in their cabin for a month. Julep had started a garden, Ieseult and Gerauld had finished the wall around the cabin-area (with help from some other fugitives from the end of the world), and Khalim had stocked them up on non-perishables and paper goods. They were in good shape – them, and the little group of twenty others who were holed up on the mountain with them.

They’d had enough warning that Khalim had turned most of his money into solid assets by the time the stock market blew up. They had supplies, real supplies, and a small community of like-minded individuals, in a place that was built for off-the-grid living. They were going to survive – and they had enough weapons to make certain they weren’t overrun. They were doing pretty well for themselves.

The four of them, the twenty of them, the fifty from that mountain, all gathered in the ski lodge nearby to watch the last TV broadcast from New York.

They watched as the bridges crumbled. They watched as the ocean flooded in. They watched until the tv showed them nothing but snow and static.

They had not had enough warning for this. There could never be enough warning.

They watched, holding hands. Not just the four of them, friends since elementary school. Not just the twenty, kin and kind. All of them, everyone on that mountain.

“How can we go on?” someone whispered.

Iesult cleared her throat, unsurprised to find it was tight with tears. “Together.” She coughed, and said it again. “Together.”

They would be pretty well off. Together.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/486171.html. You can comment here or there.

#Lexember in March: Syllabic Sunday: Snow, and snowshoes

Mar3

In the early days of the proto-Cālenyena, snow was not something that they often saw. Their Texas-like climate never had lasting snow, and rarely had snowfall at all.

Thus, their word for snow was a compound word: rain-cold-hard, teb-run-zē, which, through the centuries, and, in their new home, their far more consistent exposure to snow, became terunz. (The ending sound is actually stolen from the Bitrani. Very few Cālenyen words end in a double consonant).

And, as they were becoming more familiar with drifts of the white stuff, they needed a way to get around in this terrain.

paiterz, snow-spears, were the first innovation (essentially skis. The Cālenyena call almost everything long and pointy a spear. When all you have is a hammer, etc.)

And, in different places but for similar need, Begerz, shoes-snow, snowshoes, were developed.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/485729.html. You can comment here or there.

Pi no Wri mo: Day one (Yesterday) and last line.

Mar3

Addergoole words: 1860 [goal 1500]
Other Words: 0 [goal 500]
Total Words: 1860 [goal 2000]

Not un-recoverable!

(There was a great deal of roleplay, but that doesn’t count for words. Plus I did have of my taxes.)

Last Line of the day:

“You’re transparent, Wylie cy’Mendosa oro’Niassa.”

“I’m sorry?”

How about you?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/485412.html. You can comment here or there.

Impasse, a drabble of Luke and Mystral

Mar2

After Old School, after …Ninja…

::Luca!!::

Myst’s call ripped across Luke’s brain. He dropped everything. Everything, in this case, involved the …ninja… in his hands, and one of his swords.

He took to the air while still searching for Myst’s mind. Where, where…. he searched for heat signatures and found her very unique one. There… and her mind was unconscious. And someone was picking her up.

Luke swallowed the roar of anger only with centuries of discipline. Whoever they were, they weren’t expecting an air attack, even now. He swooped, grabbing both Myst and her attacker in one dive.

Only to find her attacker holding a wooden sword and aiming it at Luke’s throat.

He landed with a thump in Icarus’ tree fort. “Just back up nice and slowly. I’ll take the girl. You take the sword.”

He hadn’t Worked without words in a while, but he thought his Jasfe Tlacatl as strongly as he could at Mystral.

The ninja squinted at him, still pointing the sword at his throat. “Not till I get what I’m here for.”

Luke breathed as levelly as he could. He knew what a hawthorn wound to the windpipe could do. “What are you here for?”

The bastard laughed. “That would be telling.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/485172.html. You can comment here or there.

March Writing Goals

Mar2

I have an immensely complicated writing goal:

http://aldersprig.tumblr.com/post/44323414520/marnowrimo-pirate-nano-part-two

That comes down to approx. 2k/day for 30 days.

What are your goals?

I’ve found I do better if people around me are also writing to a goal; play along?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/485011.html. You can comment here or there.