Writing Exercise
The Painted Dress
It felt good, smearing terrible words in primary colors on the sacred garment, no longer pure and hanging in my closet. Tonight will be the first night without it, after I put it in the fire of cedar, sage, palo santo, ash, willow, frankincense, myrrh, and sandalwood. My fire will be so fragrant the gods will come down from heaven to make shadows with it.
By Harper Lewis22 days ago in Writers
Harper Lewis. Content Warning.
I get a feeling that some of y’all are wondering, “Who is this Harper Lewis, and where did she come from?” I’m new here, so new that I have no idea who the “same old names” are. I know that I’m new and some of my pieces have been noticed. I’m very appreciative of that, and sometimes I post with genuine hope and confidence that I nailed it, that what I tried to convey resonated, that my weirdness doesn’t alienate me.
By Harper Lewis24 days ago in Writers
Is There Anyone You Hate?
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise — Week one - write a scene that brings to fictional life someone you hate. Make the reader hate her. It might be someone who annoys you-- someone whose manner you can't stand, whose voice grates on you. Or it might be someone who has offended you or done you some harm, or someone to whom you have done some harm - there are many reasons to hate people. If you have the courage, take on someone who is evil on the grand scale. It can be someone you know, someone you know about, or best of all, invent a real nasty. The Objective: Story and only story is the peaceable kingdom where you and I and the next fellow can lie down on the same page with one another, not by wiping our differences out, but by creating our differences on the page. Only on the page of a story can I look out of your and my and the other fellow's eyes all at the same time.
By Denise E Lindquist24 days ago in Writers
Untitled . Top Story - December 2025.
I pat my brows with a handkerchief I fancy, and I think about the plight we are in today; it makes me squirm. In all my words you seek to find a formula, but your ledgers are filled with trending tabs (ephemeral tallies). You make me feel like I should be held in a box. It is impossible for someone to grow or be better than they were yesterday; simply by choice, they wish to step back and publish a little slower, less frequently.
By Caitlin Charlton25 days ago in Writers
Kwitcherbitchin. Content Warning.
I’m of Northern European and Native American roots, pretty sure the Germanic folk hailed from the small hamlet of Kwitcherbitchin, eventually breeding with travelers from Fixyerfuckingrammar and Punctuateyergoddamnsentences, on the other side of the mountains, leaving those lands after some time to marry in with inhabitants of Bespecific and Showdonttell. Eventually, their descendants got on a ship, and there were some illicit relations with Concretelanguage, resulting in the bastard births of Strongverbs, Subversion, and Sensorydetail before making landfall on Literaryallusion at the mouth of the River of Alliteration and settling in Citeyoursources, on the banks of Lake Threedimensionalcharacters, in the shadow of Realisticdialogue Mountain. I am all of my ancestors and carry the maps of their native lands in my blood.
By Harper Lewis25 days ago in Writers
Not Funny At The Time
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts The Exercise — Write about something that happened to you that didn't seem at all funny at the time, for example, being stuck in a traffic jam and having a bee fly in through the car window or the time your tenant set your stove on fire and the firemen wrenched it from the wall and tossed it into the backyard. Bring the incident under the humor spotlight and transform it so as to emphasize things that will make your reader smile or laugh.Pacing is important, as are crucial details, and your own confidence that the story does not need analysis or authorial nudging. The last thing you want to do is tell the reader that you're about to lay a funny story on him. Limit: 550 words. The Objective - Because humor resides largely in what attitude you assume toward your material, you must be able to discover and exploit those elements that highlight the comic, the exaggerated, and the unlikely. Keep in mind that you could just as easily take the bee story and make it tragic (bee bites driver, driver crashes into another car, killing infant in back seat).
By Denise E Lindquist25 days ago in Writers
Happiness and Light Unofficial Challenge - The Results!
What’s a judge to do? We had so many happy, bouncy, flouncy, bibbidy boppy (Shout out to Cristal for that phrase that has remained in our grumpy brains since we read her original entry. Alas, we went with an older, more sincere one, but you should still check it out - Paul) entries that this pair of surly curmudgeons were flummoxed by Schmaltz, zest for life and woo woo so deep we had to don waders to work our way through it. And we are both stoked that 4 of you earned Top Stories (20% of entrants)! We received eighteen entries for the Optimistic phase of the challenge that were chock-a-block with rainbows, fluffy critters, and sprites. For the Sarcastic phase of the challenge, we had two entrants who gleefully brought cold hard reality down on the optimistic entries like a couple of kids playing two-fisted Wack-a-Mole.
By Paul Stewart25 days ago in Writers
Between Craft and Curiosity: A Portrait of a Modern Mind. AI-Generated.
Names sometimes arrive with a quiet resonance, carrying more suggestion than definition. Frédéric Péchier is one such name—evoking precision, patience, and a distinctly European sense of craft. Whether imagined as an artist, a thinker, or a meticulous professional shaping his field, the name invites reflection on what it means to build a life around mastery rather than noise.
By Ayesha Lashari26 days ago in Writers
Ms. H's First Lesson. Content Warning.
This is the tale of Karol Amber Heuworth. A 20 year old woman attending Yarlvard University obtaining her doctorate in psychiatry. After living a tragically abusive life and gaining an uncontrollable anger to take the blood of men. Now she has the urge to finally find someone and do the unthinkable.
By Roy C. Theo27 days ago in Writers
