forum Virtual Creative Writing Club, anyone?
Started by @ninja_violinist
tune

people_alt 130 followers

@ElderGod-kirky group

lmao. I drop some hints but never explicitly say what the narrator is. People usually automatically make it human as opposed to something else, so I wanted to kinda flip the script a bit

@croccin-champagne

Incredible as always bro

So I started reading this book called Writing Poetry, by Barbara Drake, and it gives small like exercises and helps with inspiration, or tries to. But it worked for me and I have a bonus poem about my earliest memory now. It's short and choppy bcs I wrote it in math after finishing two quizzes, but
__________________________________________

The farthest back my mind can go
Isn't very far
Not usually, at the very least
But a bit of effort allows me to see
So many colors, each a new item
Round plastic balls
And an extra set of hands that accompanies them
They roll around the windowsill
Of a house with wood walls
Like me, they never seem to sit still
But on occasion do fall

@ninja_violinist

Just going to pop in and dump today's prompts on you all while I have time
hope you're having a nice day
feedback is on the way
—
The image (from the 2009 movie "The Secret of Kells", 11/10 absolutely stunning):

the music prompt (Oh Raven by Unlike Pluto):

the words: Excerpt from "Conscientious Objector" by Edna St. Vincent Millay (and yes I'm suddenly super into WWI poetry):

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.

@ninja_violinist

aaaand it's feedback time! There were lots of amazing entries this week! I'm glad people want to share their work here!

That being said, I have like half an hour to get this done right now so I'm sorry if this is very superficial!

@amber_demeter_misses_being_happy This is super interesting, especially the ending! I also loved the description and how I can get hints of what the narrator is like and the relationship with her brother.
Favourite line: the last one. I love how it's left open as to who gets stabbed (though I have my theories)
One thing I noticed is that there are a lot of "ing" constructions - like "watching", "slicing", "lifting", "meeting" etc. Which isn't an issue necessarily, since they have their purpose and they're important, but I think some of the things you're describing don't strictly have to happen simultaneously so it'd be okay to separate the actions and use a different conjugation (if that even makes sense lol)
Really well done though!

@Icefire This is really cool! Very strong characterisation, strong emotion, and I love the word choice ("silk and gossamer").
Favourite line: "I am/ Broken glass and swords/ Iron and winter"
(imagery is on point)
I'm not 100% sure about how effective the linebreak placement is sometimes - I'm not always sure what it's meant to be emphasising (for example "You made me/ This way"). And please take this with a bucket of salt grains, but the ending felt a tiny bit anticlimactic - a lot of the imagery throughout was subtle and open-ended, so the monster comparison feels a bit heavy-handed if that makes sense. Just a thought though - it definitely works well the way it is!

@Dances_with_Shadows-is-also-in-the-Cult Love the personification!! It took me way too long to understand it but it's super clever!
Favourite phrase: "crackling laughter"
Only thing I could possibly think of is that there's quite a bit of "telling" - I'm being told the significance of the leaf being in a wood frame or mounted up high when it might be more interesting to interpret that symbolism for myself? idk, make of that what you will
(I'm really grasping at straws here just to have something to say)

@crocssant-is-also-in-the-Cult should I be concerned about this cult thing lol This is so pure I love it!
And the bit of rhyme at the end works so well! (sill/still and walls/fall)
I wish I had something constructive to say
but all I can think of is that "wood walls" sounds a bit odd? Would "wooden walls" work?
(sorry this is so short)

anyway
thank you guys for sharing your work! It's so cool to see how people use the prompts in different ways, or just to get an insight into what everyone's already working on. And I really love how you've started to also give each other more specific feedback! The more opinions we read about our stuff, the better our understanding of how it comes across. That's what this chat is all about :)

@croccin-champagne

I am born of witches
I am born of girls, teens, barely women
Girls hung and drowned and crushed for daring to stand out amongst a bleary backdrop of gray
Girls who said no to a man and suffered at his hand and the hand of the law that was there to ‘protect’
Girls, who did not deserve to die
I am born of witches

I am born of survivors
Women who stared death in the face and said ‘you’ll take me someday, but that day is not today’
Women who’s bodies conspired against them, who’s own flesh tried to kill them
Who stood up and said ‘no. you won’t win’, and turned the tables
Of women with swords and women with pens
Used for the same thing, to fight
I am born of survivors

I am born of anger, a thirst for revenge so deep and consuming that it shouldn’t have been sideline-able
Of pain and suffering caused by people who should have been refuge from that exact thing
A hurt that ran deep, deep enough to affect every little thing, every action and reaction
I was born with anger

I was born of love
Not love from my mother to my father or vice versa, but love from my mother to me
Love that keeps me warm, by handing me a second-hand winter coat
An old coat but a coat nonetheless
Love, that puts a roof over my head and bandaids on my knees when I trip and fall
Because I inherited Love’s clumsy genes
Love, who does not yell back but who listens
Love, who knows what it’s like to feel unheard but saves her voice for when it matters most

I am born of pain and love and sorrow
Of anger and hurt and so many things it would take hours to list them standing here
But I am also born of hope
Born with stardust in my lungs and my mother’s blood in my veins
Born with the spirits and ghosts of the women before me standing behind and beside me

I am born with purpose
Purpose to right the wrongs that I can, to change the world in whatever way I can
To scream with all the voices that have guided me and come before me
And to pass them on
Maybe not to my own daughter, but to every woman I meet
Every woman with her own spirits and anger and her ancestors beside
To pass on hope

I am born of anger and hope.

(Have more yelling! This one is actually semi edited lmao)

@ElderGod-Icefire

@Icefire This is really cool! Very strong characterisation, strong emotion, and I love the word choice ("silk and gossamer").
Favourite line: "I am/ Broken glass and swords/ Iron and winter"
(imagery is on point)
I'm not 100% sure about how effective the linebreak placement is sometimes - I'm not always sure what it's meant to be emphasising (for example "You made me/ This way"). And please take this with a bucket of salt grains, but the ending felt a tiny bit anticlimactic - a lot of the imagery throughout was subtle and open-ended, so the monster comparison feels a bit heavy-handed if that makes sense. Just a thought though - it definitely works well the way it is!

That's fair. The monster thing is meant to sound a bit heavy handed i guess. It's meant to show sort of how the character's mind has broken. Same with the linebreaks. The poem is sort of meant to be showing how his mind fell apart over time.

@ElderGod-Icefire

So this is loosely based on the image prompt, I'm not sure i like how it turned out but here we go.

The tree of life was tall and strong. The branches curled up into the sky. At the base, though, a sprout grew up. Small and little and just a baby, it was cared for by a black haired boy with skin the color of milk and eyes the color of death. This little tree began to leech the strength from the bigger tree; began to steal from the tree of life under the guidance of the black haired boy with milk white skin.

And this tree was called Thanatos. This tree's leaves grew up jagged. They grew up broad. Soon the tree of life began to suffer. It began to lose to Thanatos. While neither was ever fully ahead of the other, Thanatos never gave ground. Soon the little sprout was no longer little. It's leaves were numbered at far more than the tree of life's, and its roots dug deep in the earth. The little boy, too, grew bigger, reigning over Thanatos and all that was in it, and the boy's name was Hades.

Thanatos could never fully choke out the tree of life, but it would never again be smaller. For the dead will always outnumber the living.

@croccin-champagne

Gotta say, sharing my poetry with y'all is the best thing ever. You're all super sweet and nice about corrections and advice, and it's made me entirely more willing to open myself up to feedback and sharing with people I know irl

@ElderGod-Icefire

I was reading Les Misérables, and watched the musical the day before, and had the urge to write this. It's inspired by the scene where the revolutionaries are being killed. So. I'm not sure how much I like it lol

Bullets come up through the floor,
I don't think we can last much more.
Blood has stained all over the walls
Gunshots echo down the halls.
We are the last that remain,
Final gasps of a dying dream.

It started back when
I had pints of good beer
Among those friends who showed no fear,
They cried 'Vive la revolution!'
'Down with the king!'
'twas then that the alarm bells failed to ring.

They planned and they plotted
With their own plans becoming besotted,
Enraptured by dreams too far off
Even for those made of the sternest stuff.
I say they, but ah, mon Amie!
I was one of them, you see.

I aided and abetted
Through every hardship we weathered
Until that day when the streets ran red
With all of our spilt blood.
For how could our little group dare
To try and aid in the people's despair?

"Stand down! lay down your weapons!' they told
But alas, how could we?
To this venture we had given our very souls.
So we bled out into the gutters
Amid foul smoke and cursing mutters.

And so the kings men, they
Brought low the barricade,
Climbed over it shooting.
Nothing we could do but reload and keep going.
They pressed us back and back and back,
Wounded cried for help, mercy, pity, but alack!
For those poor souls, the army had none.

Which brings me here
With smoke and blood near,
Shaking, waiting, nearly my turn to go,
Out onto the ground, let my blood flow.

But I am scared of what comes next
Will I be cursed or will I be blessed?
Heaven or Hell, what awaits me?
Lord, give unto me thy mercy.

@saor_illust school

Nope, that's perfect, in my opinion! (And is this written from any particular perspective of any of the characters? The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Enjolras)

@croccin-champagne

  1. Hella fuckin fantastic Ice, dude, honestly. I love the 'final gasps of a dying dream' line so much you have no idea

  2. So I know I posted literally just two days ago but. I also. Can't get something out of my head. So excuse the shitty tired writing that's jumbled together and spit on the page, but

For as long as I can remember, my mind has been loud
Seventeen train tracks, with all the trains just narrowly missing each other
Loud and chaotic as they pass
And sometimes they crash
For as long as I can remember, my mind has never been quiet
Noisy and terrifying
A storm of thoughts and feelings and none of them finished
Quiet is not something I’ve known

Until I met a boy
A boy who stilled my thoughts even when talking about the most inane things
Snakes on a Plane and the watch-ability of Green Lantern
He managed to take the rush hour traffic in my head and turn it into
A semi-straight and quiet back road
I’ve never known quiet, but this boy showed it to me

Maybe it was his eyes
The colors so much like a sea during a storm, blue-ish grey in simpler terms
But enough to calm my own storm
While I was busy trying to place what exactly it was they reminded me of
Or maybe it was his smile
Crooked-ish teeth and the way his eyes lit up
Talking about good and bad movies and the family friendly Deadpool

Whatever it was, I found myself quiet, metaphorically and mentally
My thoughts not running as wild as they normally do
Calm, something I’ve seen maybe a total of twice, even when asleep
So I’m thanking the boy on my bus
The one who makes me laugh and makes my mind quiet
The one who’s now stuck entirely in my head