Advice
Text and Subtext
Haiku of Now challenge results were released on Friday. Haiku challenges are easy winners’ page reads, but good grief, the judges had to slog through over 1300, minus the ones that were disqualified for not adhering. A couple of mine probably fell into that pile—if you read beyond the blurb, it was a very specific challenge—no past, no reflection, no past tense, no interpretation—just a lived-in moment. Some of mine reflected or interpreted, may have even had a past tense verb somewhere.
By Harper Lewisabout an hour ago in Writers
Have you ever grieved someone who's still alive?
I recently had a falling out with my high school best friend of 15+ years. To be honest I already felt like I was grieving for someone I hadn’t quite lost yet. The days, weeks, months had gone by with no communication or check ins, I knew something was up. They eventually told me they think we are on different paths in life. I know people can outgrow each other; I understand that completely. I think it’s actually realistic to believe not everyone you went to school with or knew when you were younger is going to be in your life in your 20s, 30s and beyond. Though that thought doesn’t make the healing easier.
By soft staticabout 10 hours ago in Writers
The Comforting Scent of the Past
Many of us tend to rely on past experience to guide our creative work, but how do you access those precious memories in crystal clear detail? The buried wealth of nostalgic magic that’s waiting to be sparked? At least when you aren’t being held hostage to trauma.
By K.B. Silver a day ago in Writers
Digital Graveyard Confessions
I used to pour my morning coffee, open my laptop, and genuinely trust the words staring back at me. Now, I sip my brew with a heavy dose of suspicion. I am being haunted. Not by spirits, but by soulless algorithms masquerading as articles written by ChatGPT otherwise referred as journalists that often name me in them for ranking. I am featured rich, poor, an aggresor or a victim depending who has written it.
By Narghiza Ergashova3 days ago in Writers
A plot based on a dream or current events.
Dean Winchester and Scooby-Doo The group that concludes of Mystra; {Dark-Queen, my twin-sister} Lord Cyrus-Emery, known as “Wolf-Gang,” Phoebe Shadow-claw known as “Shining-One,” Luna; know as a Mage, people call her, “Spirit-Walker,” Aurora known as “Leviathan,” Sophia-Goddess of all, known as “Moonbeam,” and myself, Raven-Wolf, known as “Ice-Spirit⛄.”
By Pseudonym “Kathy,” though my legal name is Chantel.4 days ago in Writers
The Fourth Wall
I blame modernism and postmodernism for the plague of literary rooms that are essentially open plazas or terraces. For me, there’s a problem with assuming that the room can survive without the fourth wall. Writers like Shakespeare, Bronte, Vonnegut, and Salinger successfully break the fourth wall, which means it exists. You can’t break a wall that isn’t there.
By Harper Lewis4 days ago in Writers
To My Beloved Grandson
Grandson: I’m writing this to you now, even though you are so young you’re unable to read or comprehend it, because I feel we are at the edge of a great precipice morally and idealistically and practically. I publish this letter in its entirety in the present, the year 2026, when you are but a scant few months old. A copy will reside with your parents to hold in trust for you, that you may have a physical reminder of me and my thoughts and my love for you even after I’m gone. I recognize it as a quaint old custom, the passing along of an old fashioned letter written on paper, by hand, in a form of script that you may look at and never actually comprehend. To you, when you are finally presented this artifact, it may be as alien a form of communication as I found Sumerian cuneiform, or Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Incan knot language. I’m hoping your mother and father school you a bit in the art of what is known as cursive writing in the here and now, even if the educational system abandons the practice. I believe it is important to be able to write and especially to read cursive, and the most important founding documents of our nation were written in that script. I believe it is vitally necessary to be able to read those primary sources in their original form, rather than rely on an unknown human or machine mind’s translation.
By David Muñoz5 days ago in Writers
