Instead the theme for this Project is “Fresh,” whether that means “audacious” or “new” – and perhaps a bit of both!

Remember to tag your posts with Café Writing, or link to us in some fashion.

This Project will be live through the end of January. When a new Project opens, the previous one is closed.

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

Pick at least three of the following words, and build a piece of writing around them. The form is up to you: poem, scene, flash-fic, essay, or general blog entry.
discovery, experience, failure, false, highway, positive, seek, sense, true

Option Two 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.)

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

Using the quotation above as your inspiration, write a poem (any form is fine) about praying for peace, planting trees, or singing joyful songs.

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

Using the above quotation as your inspiration, write a flash-fic, scene, or short story involving a bright morning.

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

Take nine minutes (use all nine, but don’t go over), and write on the subject of short-lived passions.
This is a timed exercise and it’s expected that it won’t be perfect. Any format – fiction, essay, verse – is welcome.

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

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.

Give me seven things that inhabit or occupy your writing space. Interpret “writing space” any way you please. You’re not required to explain the items in your list, but it’s more fun for readers if you do.

Happy Writing, and Best Wishes for 2009

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

Option Two: Can You Picture That?

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

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

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>

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

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

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