03 Tuesday Aug 2010
Posted in 2010, Participants Pages
Thank you to the folks who participated in the comeback project for CafeWriting. Please tell your friends about the project!
The July Participants were:
16 Wednesday Sep 2009
Posted in Participants Pages
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July 20th, 2009, is the anniversary of the first moon landing. In honor of the occasion, and because I’m a total space nut, and have watched the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, which dramatized the history of the Apollo missions, our theme from mid-July til mid-August (ahem SEPTEMBER) was SPACE.
Personally, I find inspiration when I look up at the stars and imagine. So do a lot of others, including those who’ve actually been out there, which is why our prompt quotations this month are all taken from the Space Poetry page, at the Encyclopedia Astronautica. Please visit the page for the complete text of the poems I’ve chosen.
Here are YOUR submissions:
Option One: Timed Writing
Option Two: Seven Things
Option Three: Pick Three
Option Four: Can You Picture That?
Option Five: Poetry
Option Six: Fiction
Happy Writing, and Happy Stargazing
19 Sunday Jul 2009
Posted in 2009, Participants Pages
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Here, at long last, are the Spring/Summer participants for May/June/July (The Magic of Milne).
Thank you all for your lovely words. New prompts will be posted shortly.
18 Monday May 2009
Posted in 2009, Participants Pages
Here, at long last, are the Spring participants for March/April/May
Ann Nickerson
Bearer
Thank you all for your lovely words. New prompts will be posted shortly.
14 Saturday Mar 2009
Posted in 2009, Participants Pages
If I did have an honest — or dishonest — desire to kiss just one or two people, I might — but I couldn’t want to — my mouth is yours.
~Zelda Fitzgerald (in a love letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald)
What can I tell you by letter? Alas! nothing that I would tell you. The messages of the gods to each other travel not by pen and ink and indeed your bodily presence here would not make you more real: for I feel your fingers in my hair, and your cheek brushing mine. The air is full of the music of your voice, my soul and body seem no longer mine, but mingled in some exquisite ecstasy with yours. I feel incomplete without you.
~Oscar Wilde (in a letter to Constance Wilde)
…should I draw you the picture of my heart it would be what I hope you would still love though it contained nothing new. The early possession you obtained there, and the absolute power you have obtained over it,leaves not the smallest space unoccupied..
~Abigail Adams (in a letter to John Adams)
I don’t like it at all. All the Chairs are staring at me in the most frightful way — And there is a Lady on the Mantel piece who has taken a Great objection to me — and I’m awfully scared —
This is no place for a person with a nice cheerful disposition like me — it looks like those parlors in the Novels where they plot things –
~Isadora Duncan (in a letter to Gordon Craig)
Do not imagine, because you find these lines in your journal that I have been trespassing. You know I have not – and where else shall I leave a love letter? For I long to write you a love-letter tonight.
You are all about me – I seem to breathe you, hear you, feel you in me and of me.
What am I doing here? You are away. I have seen you in the train, at the station, driving up, sitting in the lamplight, talking, greeting people, washing your hands… And I am here – in your tent – sitting at your table.
.
~Katherine Mansfield (in a letter to John Middleton Murray)
08 Sunday Feb 2009
Posted in 2009, Participants Pages
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Happy 2009!
These are the submissions for the January 2009 Project, “Fresh.” Please visit them and leave comments if you haven’t already, and look for the February project sometime in the next week.
Submissions for “Fresh” will be accepted until the next Project goes live.
Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some.
~John Keats
Option Two Can You Picture That?
Option Three Poetry
I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs.
~William Arthur Ward
Option Four:Fiction
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
~Erich Fromm
Option Five: Timed Writing
Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a perpetual succession of miracles rising into view.
~Joseph Addison
Option Six: Seven Things
In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write..
~Pearl S. Buck
02 Friday Jan 2009
Posted in 2008, Participants Pages, Special Editions
Welcome to the 2008 Holiday Project at Cafe Writing!
In the month of December we have so many celebrations – the Solstice, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve – that it seems wrong to ignore them – but one thing all share is an element of the mystical or magical.
There’s so much bad news in the world today, that rather than focusing on individual holidays, the theme for this month is HOLIDAY MAGIC. It will run through the first weekend of the New Year, I think.
(As an aside, if the quotes seem Christmas-heavy, that isn’t meant to push a personal agenda, and certainly I don’t expect your writings to be Christmas-centric.)
That’s the thing with magic. You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.
~Charles DeLint
Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening’s forehead o’er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
~Emma Lazarus, “The Feast of Lights”
Holiday Project Image
If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.
~Samuel Smiles
Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
~Laura Ingalls Wilder
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
~Francis P. Church, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus”
Don’t forget to comment here with your name, the title of your piece, the selected option number, and the direct link to it.
HAPPY WRITING & Happy Holidays
20 Thursday Nov 2008
Posted in 2008, Participants Pages
This is the Participants Page for the 2008 November/December Project: Jewels. It will be updated until the Project closes..
Option One: Pick Three
Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents’ pots and pans, the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.
~Susan Sontag
Option Two: Can You Picture That?
Option Three: Poetry
Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.
~Mark Twain
Option Four: Fiction
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
~Federico Fellini
Option Five: Timed Writing
I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like…. It’s like Tiffany’s…. Not that I give a hoot about jewelry. Diamonds, yes. But it’s tacky to wear diamonds before you’re
forty…
~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
(spoken by the character Holly Golightly)
Some men’s memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes.
~George Savile
Don’t forget to comment here with your name, the title of your piece, the selected option number, and the direct link to it. Also, please note: since the database was destroyed and I’ve had to reconstruct, you’ve ALL become first-time posters again, so your comments will be queued for approval.
Also? There’s still time to submit to this Project. Follow this link for the actual prompts.
HAPPY WRITING
07 Friday Nov 2008
Posted in 2008, Participants Pages, Special Editions
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Option One: Can You Picture That?
Option Two: Poetry
Witch and ghost make merry on this last of dear October’s days.
~ Author Unknown
Rules? (In Which Jeremy Ignores Them, to Good Effect), by Jeremy
Option Three: Fiction
“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.”
~ George Carlin
Option Four: Timed Writing
Halloween wraps fear in innocence,
As though it were a slightly sour sweet.
Let terror, then, be turned into a treat…
~ Nicholas Gordon
Option Five: Seven Things
“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
Option Six: Pick Three
A house is never silent in darkness
to those who listen intently;
there is a whispering in distant chambers,
an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window,
the latch rises.Ghosts were created when the first man
woke in the night.
~ J. M. Barrie
Project words: awoke, chamber, distant, ghost, house, listen, still, whisper, window
19 Sunday Oct 2008
Posted in 2008, Participants Pages, Special Editions
Halloween Project (October/November 2008)
A gypsy fire is on the hearth,
Sign of the carnival of mirth;
Through the dun fields and from the glade
Flash merry folk in masquerade,
For this is Hallowe’en!
~Author Unknown
Welcome to the Café.
This edition of the Café Writing Project is a special Halloween edition. If Halloween isn’t part of your culture, you’re invited to open yourself up to the darker parts of your imagination, anyway.
We’ll be running the Halloween theme from now til the 9th of November, which means it also spans the Presidential election in the United States. Appropriate, I think, since modern politics are scarier than any ghosts or goblins ever could be.
For guidelines, please see The Rules. Remember that you should leave a comment with your link, including the title of the piece that you wrote, and the appropriate option number. Also, I would encourage everyone to visit the blogs of CW participants – most of our Regulars have amazing writing on their sites throughout the month.
If this is your first time here, please be aware that comments from first-time posters are held in queue until they’re approved by a live person, and that participant pages go up roughly two weeks after the beginning of each Project, and will be updated until the next Project goes live.
The planned launch date of the next project is November 9th
* * * * *
Option One: Can You Picture That?
Use the following photo to inspire an entry in any form – fiction, essay, poetry.
* * * * *
Option Two: Poetry
Witch and ghost make merry on this last of dear October’s days.
~ Author Unknown
Using the quotation above as your inspiration, write a poem (any form is fine) about witches and /or ghosts.
* * * * *
Option Three: Fiction
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
~ George Carlin
Write a flash-fic, scene, or short story involving a night when the moon is howling.
* * * * *
Option Four: Timed Writing
Halloween wraps fear in innocence,
As though it were a slightly sour sweet.
Let terror, then, be turned into a treat…
~ Nicholas Gordon
Take thirteen minutes (use all thirteen, but don’t go over), and write on the subject of fear wrapped in innocence.
This is a timed exercise and it’s expected that it won’t be perfect. Any format – fiction, essay, verse – is acceptable.
* * * * *
Option Five: Seven Things
Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
In improvisation, one of our exercises is a game called “Seven Things,” in which we go around in a circle giving each other the challenge, “Give me seven things that [whatever].” We are not going to go around in a circle here, but if you’re drawn to lists, this prompt is for you.
So, give me either seven things that scare you OR seven of your favorite horror films.
You are not required to provide any explanations, but it’s more interesting for readers if you do.
* * * * *
Option Six: Pick Three
A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently;
there is a whispering in distant chambers,
an unearthly hand presses the sill of the window,
the latch rises.
Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.
~ J.M. Barrie
Pick at least three of the following nine words, and write a paragraph, scene, flash-fic, essay, blog entry or poem using them. It’s fine to change tenses, or pluralize if you want to, but please bold the words you choose.
awoke, chamber, distant, ghost, house, listen, still, whisper, window
Don’t forget to comment on this post with the direct link, title, and selected option for each piece you create. Happy Writing!