Cafe Writing

Here, at long last, are the Spring participants for March/April/May

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Option One Poetry

1. The Sound of Rain, by Rahul
2. Weather Saga, by Jeeves
3. Urban Perspicacity, by sister AE
4. Echoes, by Destinee Weathers
5. To Rain or Not To Rain, by Gemma
6. It Rains on a Spring Evening, by Cavaliere
7. Tiny Sprouts, by Bobbi
8. Weather Means More, by Rebecca Reid
9. National Poetry Month Farewell, by Linda

   Ann Nickerson

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Option Two:Fiction

1. Reformation, by J.C. Montgomery
2. Twilight in the Garden, by James Steerforth
3. The Little Meadow, by Bobbi
4. Alone in the Garden, by The Light Bearer

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Option Three: Timed Writing

1. Panoramic View of My Heart, by A~Lotus
2. My Kitchen Garden, by Bobbi
3. It is Written That…, by James Steerforth

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Option Four: Seven Things

1. Seven of my Guilty Pleasures, by The Light

   Bearer

2. Seven Guilty Pleasures, by Ayesha
3. 7 Guilty Pleasures, by Bobbi

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Option Five: Pick Three

1. Garden Writing, by Becca
2. Never-ending Spring, by J.C. Montgomery
3. My Wild Garden, by Bobbi

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Option Six Can You Picture That?

1. Come On, Baby, by Destinee Weathers

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Thank you all for your lovely words. New prompts will be posted shortly.

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Option One Can You Picture That?


Photo Credit: Xaviarnau via iStockPhoto

1. Enough of Love, by Little Wing
2. It’s Not What It Looks Like, by James Steerforth
3. Bang! Bang!, by Bobbi
4. He Was Nice, by The Light Bearer

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Option Two Poetry

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)

1. Others, by Ofira Sephiroth
2. L’Agent Provacateur, by Carl Colaco
3. Vessel, by Rob Kistner
4. My Life-Saver, by Bobbi
5. Empty Words, by Melanie

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Option Three:Fiction

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)

1. Sending You a Piece of My Heart, by Amercanising Desi
2. The Consequences, by Jenn

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Option Four: Timed Writing

…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)

1. For Fuzzy: A Picture of My Heart, by Melissa A. Bartell
2. Picture of My Heart, by Becca
3. My Yellow Heart, by Jessie
4. Finger Paints, by sister AE
5. Eat Your Heart Out, by Floreta
6. The Picture of My Heart, by James Steerforth
7. My Heart, by Bobbi
8. A Picture of My Heart, by The Light Bearer

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Option Five: Seven Things

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)

1. 7 Unromantic Places We’ve Kissed, by Bobbi

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Option Six: Pick Three

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)

1. Untangling the Past, by Jane Doe
2. Good Things Come in Pairs, by Annie McLennon
3. Ex-Varsity, by Tiel Aisha Ansari
4. Love Letter, by Tamy
5. Rants, by Jeeves
6. Unwritten Loveletter, by Leonard Blumfeld
7. Dearest Love, by Becca
8. On Peace, by This Girl Remembers
9. Love Letters, by Janet
10. Dear, by Dreamer

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Thank you all for your comments and participation, your words of condolence, and your understanding. Welcome to the new folks: Melanie, Dreamer, The Light Bringer, Floreta, and anyone else I’ve missed.

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.

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Option One: Pick Three

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

1. Down the Rabbit Hole, by Bobbi
2. Losing Faith, by Jane Doe
3. Frugal Fusion, by Little Wing
4. Untitled, by Becca
5. Nadir, by Paisley
6. Poem in Draft: Somebody Watching You, by Gautami Tripathy

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Option Two Can You Picture That?

Photo Credit: Rana K. Williamson

1. Haiku, by A~lotus
2. Cardinal Totem, by Bobbi

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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

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1. Peace, by Bobbi
2. Wanted: Contralto Solos, by sister AE
3. I Prayed for Peace, by Pretty Prats
4. A Piece of Peace, by Ginger
5. Grace in Autumn, by diatribalArts

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

1. Break of Day, by Medhini
2. The Effort Life Implies, by J. C. Montgomery
3. January Project, by Jessie

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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

1. Words of Passion by Hand, by A~Lotus
2. A Short-Lived Passion, by Rebecca Reid
3. Ice, Ice, Baby, by Melissa A. Bartell

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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

1. My Writing Space, by ell
2. My Writing Space: A List of Seven Things, by Rebecca Reid
3. Seven Physical Spaces of Writing, by A~lotus
4. My Writing Space, by Bobbi
5. Seven Things in My Writing Space, by Mike G.
6. Components of my Writing Space, by Ginger
7. Seven Things, by PinkNic
8. Hiding Space, by SlyGly
9. 7 Things, by Tamy
10. Seven Things, by Janet
11. Seven Things, by Bonni
12. Seven Things, by Becca
13. January Prompts: Fresh, by Michelle
14. Desk Set, by Melissa A. Bartell

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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.)

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Option One: Seven Things

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

1. It’s a Magical World, by A~Lotus
2. Indistinguishable from Magic, by Melissa A. Bartell
3. Seven Magical Things, by Becca
4. My Magic Seven, by Bobbi
5. Seven Magical Things, by Janet
6. Seven Magical Things, by Sister AE
7. Seven Magical Things by Zan

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Option Two: Pick Three

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”

1. Was Jesus Born on Christmas Eve?, by Bobbi
2. Fascination, by Tiel Aisha Ansari
3. Scene on a Winter Evening, by Melissa A. Bartell
4. Hold This Law, by Richard
5. Playing for Pleasing the Moon, by Gautami Tripathy
6. La Vie en Rose, by Lissa
7. Dream or Reality, by Anu

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Option Three: Can You Picture That?
Use the following photo to inspire a piece of writing in any form (poetry, prose, whatever).
(Please remember to copy the image to your own server, and include photo credit when it is known.)

Photo Credit: Konstantin Yuganov

1. The Wonder, The Magic, by Bobbi
2. Oh, Wonder, by Niebla

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Option Four: Poetry

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

1. My Angel, by Bobbi
2. Haiku, by A~Lotus
3. Living with Angels, by Tiel Aisha Ansari

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Option Five:Fiction

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

1. Christmas is Green, by Bobbi

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Option Six: Timed Writing

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”

1. Unseen Wonders, by Bobbi
2. Unseen and Unseeable Wonders, by Gemma

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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

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

• Cat Views, by Tiel Aisha Ansari
• What Letters Are Made Of, by A~Lotus
• Brittle Yesterdays, by Gemma
• Jeweled Letter, by Niebla
• Time Tested, by Becca
• Pieces of the Landscape of My Youth, by sister AE

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Option Two: Can You Picture That?

Photo Credit: Janet Spering

• My Three Girls, by Bobbi
• Dancing Through Time, by sister AE
• Something Old, by Melissa A. Bartell

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Option Three: Poetry

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.
~Mark Twain

• Heirloom Damonds, by Tiel Aisha Ansari
• Like Second-Hand Diamonds, by Gemma
• Second Hand, by sister AE
• Got Holiday Spirit?, by Linda
• Frozen Foods and Filly Friends, by Linda
• Different Kinds of Blood Diamonds, by Richard

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Option Four: Fiction

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
~Federico Fellini

• Autobiographical Art, by Snack
• Broken Promise, by Medhini
• The Pearl Bracelet, by Rob Kistner/li>

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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)

• My Grandmother’s Pearls, by Melissa A. Bartell
• This Place, by James Steerforth

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Option Six: Seven Things

Some men’s memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes.
~George Savile

• Memory Box, by Bobbi
• Box of Me, by Melissa A. Bartell
• Stranger, by Rob Kistner

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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