A different type of challenge...

[Belegon]

I am really enjoying the responses we have got here to our work. It is so rare and hard to get this amount of feedback on a story or poem alone. I wanted to respond to a few things.

The first is that two of our reviewers have mentioned the impression that Will is dancing in celebration of the sex. He is actually dancing because of the love. Doc seems to see both, because he mentions at the end that it is a love story, which is exactly correct. Will thinks that he has lost his dream of reigniting this relationship because of going off to chase his other dream. His joy is in his realization that he has not. I have to consider how I can more strongly make that point and convey the reason for his dance stronger. While it is hard for him to leave, he went there thinking he had lost his chance with Kris forever. The dance is because he was wrong.

I knew I was taking a risk using established characters. Please realize that these characters are from a previously posted piece of prose. GingerV, that description of the first night you are looking for, and more info about both Jason and Debbie, are here, in "Wingman". Jason is actually the character I get the most feedback about. He is a real jerk, and lots of people seem to love to hate him. "Wingman" is by far my story that has generated the most response. I have received many requests for a sequel.

I used the challenge to continue Kris and Will's story and move it away from my actual history. Wingman is fairly autobiographical, but this is not. In real life, Kris and I never managed to overcome the distance between us and recapture that first nights magic. We tried but it was never the same.

Dancing Wildly was not about Kris and Will when it was written, and it seems that you have all noticed this on some level. More, you have grasped the underlying truth about its original intent.

Thank you so much for the real work all of you who reviewed this have done and for the suggestions you have made. Boo, thank you for coming up with the idea. I am absolutely thrilled to have such well thought-out and comprehensive feedback.

As for my fellow participants...DAMN! Y'ALL ARE GOOD!

 

[wildsweetone]

Each poem can have a different interpretation for each person.

I think that is a difficult thing to overcome and in fact, I don't believe it should be overcome unless nobody understood the meaning the author wanted to convey.

Once poetry (or even at times, prose) is out there for the public to read, then more often than not it is beyond the reach of the author to play with the words and language.

I still think this was an excellent exercise from both the poetry and prose aspect. It not only makes the writer think but it has also made your readers think.

One of the tricks when writing the short story is to be aware of how much information you leave out. When writing poetry you can take hours, days, weeks and play with the language used, even with a single word. When writing prose, you can do the same thing.

I think in the area of too little information, some authors have such full knowledge of their characters that they sometimes assume that the readers know the same amount of information. (I think that's like your established characters Belegon.) For the integration of understanding to move from poem to story and vice versa, there has to be enough detail within each story to answer any possible questions.

Angeline said: Wild, Pyewacket Girl is some weird mystical creature. I think she is as much a witch as Ardith or Euphemia though she acts as Euphemia's familiar in the story. I could do another story about Pye--I think she would be a seductress, unlike Ardith who though aware of her power (and certainly could do what Euphemia did) is something of an innocent in this tale.

So, Pyewacket Girl is a switch! *giggling* Thank you for the explanation, I saw her as what you've said, but somehow tripped when thinking the cat has a familiar (normally a familiar is a cat, so it didn't quite add up right in my mind).

 

[Angeline]

I want to take a moment to ask if the artwork posted with the story was also original. It dropped my jaw, and tied everything together wonderfully.

I started with an old photo of New York City and painted it and played around till it felt dreamy like the story, then I superimposed the cat on it. I love doing illustrations--and I think they help my writing. I often revise what I write after I illustrate because it gives me a clearer vision of what I want to say.

And Son is Cuban guitar music. It's folky but definitely Latin with echoes of Africa in it. It's very beautiful.

 

[Belegon]

Each poem can have a different interpretation for each person.

I think that is a difficult thing to overcome and in fact, I don't believe it should be overcome unless nobody understood the meaning the author wanted to convey.

Indeed, and I at first hesitated to use "Dancing Wildly" for exactly that reason. I love the fact that people sometimes see things different. Of course, it also sometimes infuriates me that I did not get my point across. I am never mad at my audience for not understanding my work. I do get mad at myself for not expressing my point well enough.

Once poetry (or even at times, prose) is out there for the public to read, then more often than not it is beyond the reach of the author to play with the words and language.

I still think this was an excellent exercise from both the poetry and prose aspect. It not only makes the writer think but it has also made your readers think.

I love the exercise! I am so glad I participated!

I think in the area of too little information, some authors have such full knowledge of their characters that they sometimes assume that the readers know the same amount of information. (I think that's like your established characters Belegon.) For the integration of understanding to move from poem to story and vice versa, there has to be enough detail within each story to answer any possible questions.

I struggled with that. But I honestly had absolutely nothing 3 days before the due date. Then my whole story came out in one sitting. But I did not want to force people to read "Wingman" to understand the story. So, an added challenge. Try to make it stand on it's own. I love that I had to work to meet this challenge. I think it will be very beneficial in the long run. I had to somehow show the conflict.

My paragraph about the baseball job is an example of the conflict within me. To my readership, it is unnecessary. To me, it is very neccessary. Because I have to show what is so very important to Will that he would take the risk of losing Kris. Perhaps part of that is because Will started as an extension of myself. Or maybe I am setting up another story. I don't know yet.

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

Hey, Shanglan!

Everyone has til Midnight tonight (it's 9:55pm Central Standard Time here) to post their stories so anytime after that. It looks to me though like a few have decided not to post, for whatever reason. We'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for your interest.

sorry boo..real life kinda haulted me finishing this on time..i had missed the deadline.

ah well next one maybe.

 

[BooMerengue]

Blue?? I bet if you posted it now at least some of the judges would look at it. Go ahead!

 

[Belegon]

Post it Blue...maybe I can fill in for a judge...

 

[BooMerengue]

Thats nice Belegon, but not the same. I think some of the Judges are still around!

 

[wildsweetone]

I will be around again in about 12 hours. I am free if you'd like me to comment. (If I'm any good that is! lol)

...I think it's an interesting idea if you want to comment Belegon... you'll learn things too by looking at the writing in this way as opposed to an author angle.

 

[MLyons]

I want to thank everyone and Boo especially for allowing me to participate here. I'm going to have to do the stories/poems one at at time and I'll start with that I think is the first one.

One other thing, I hope people aren't really perceiving us (Dr. M, Varian, Ginger, Sweet, etc.) as "judges" Ick. I'm SO not qualified for that. I hope my reactions are... interesting, if not useful, and if I'm doing something I shouldn't, please feel free to let me know either here or a PM to shut the hell up.

Ok. Enough of my normal ad-nausium disclaimers. I have not yet read any of my fellow "visitor's" reactions, so if I'm overly repetitive of what others have said, I apologize. I'll start with Belegon.

Belegon --

Initial impressions. I really like the poem, and I know I'm not supposed to make evaluative criqiques of the poem necessarily, but I wanted to say that it gave me a sense of... joy. A sense of love, in fact. The idea that the narrator is dancing because he has no other way of expressing the feelings in his heart, and that is a powerful and very touching notion to me (as someone who could be accused of having a sickeningly overdeveloped sense of optimistic romticism).

That said, I did not read the prequel to the story, not because I'm a lazy SOB so much as I thoght it might defeat the purpose of the challenge, to have the short story after the poem be enough to speak by itself. The difference between the story and the poem is quite fascinating, actually. After reading the poem, the story is very literal. It's very cause and effect, in a sense, and that admittedly is the very essence of the difference between the two genres. Man meets woman, man and woman have misunderstanding/strife, man and woman have sex and all is well. The limits of the challenge are such that you have to be extraordinarily economical in order to make the story work. My understanding of the challenge is to write a story that explains the poem, or a story that perhaps expands the essence of the poem into a sequence of events that evokes the same feeling. (Perhaps I'm wrong there). That's a damn difficult challenge! I am SO FAR from being a poetry expert it's not even laughable, but my impression of poetry in general is that you're trying to evoke a feeling, sometimes a darn complex one, with words, sounds, phrases and juxtapositions that make use of the reader's own psyche and experience to fill in the details. In contrast, the purpose of a really good story (meaning a story that has a theme, or tries to convey emotion and meaning) is to show the reader a juxtapostion of events and characters that evokes the desired response. As a pure reader (not being an expert by any means on either genre), I feel that the poem does it's job, and the story falls a bit short. The reason I say that is that the story might be trying to do too much and at the same time not doing enough. It's very tell-y (meaning it tells me what's going on rather than shows me) and it might be trying to explain too much. What I'm missing are the little details, the tiny tell-tale interactions between the narrator and Kris that really resonate--that show the dynamics of their relationship that the poem manages to capture so well. Instead of showing me how he feels about her, it's trying to tell me and because of that, it loses it's power.

I think in this case, (and I promise I don't say this just because I love sex...) I would have concentrated almost the entire story on the sex between them. You could have explored not only the way they have sex, and the delicious intimate details of that, but through that you could have explored the feelings behind it that might have at least contrbuted to the feelings behind the poem. At least... I think that's what I might have tried. My take is that the poem is about love, whereas the story as it stands, is more about a misunderstanding and reconciliation, because of that I kind of had a hard time relating the two together, if that makes any sense.

Not that I could do ANY better mind you. This is a difficult and fascinating challenge. Poetry is not fiction, and fiction is not poetry. They're two completely different animals. Overall, though, from a pure storytelling standpoint, it seemed that the story was trying to give a grander picture, when maybe more of a microcosm--a slice of time at just the right few moments, would have perhaps elicited more emotion and meaning.

I hope this is what you all are after. Maybe I'm not being fair. Please know, and I'll say this until I'm blue in the face--I really don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Will tackle the next poem/story combo later this afternoon.

 

[MLyons]

Angeline --

Given that I know next to nothing about what makes good poetry, I really liked Angeline's poem. It was a bit of a challenge for me, but I imagine that in some respects that's a good thing, and part of the intent. When I read the poem I got the sense that it was certainly about a cat, and it had undertones of witchcraft--of magic (with the mention of Pyewacket Girl as a familiar), which then can be interpretted more broadly in the sense that Pyewacket Girl is much more than just a cat. Perhaps she's a kind of temptress as well, not only as a cat but maybe as a human.

All this was inherent within the poem, at least for me. And granted I could have been reading into it, but as a reader, that's my perogative right?

That all said, I REALLY liked the story. Somehow it really skirts that line between poetry and prose, while at the same time, yes, telling a story. It's beautiful to read, powerful in its presentation and equally as economical. I was immersed in the world immediately. I thought the first half of the story was better than the second half, I think--as it manages to quickly create a relatable magical environment that somehow doesn't carry a lot of the baggage that a lot of halloween-esque tales of witchcraft sometimes get mired in. It's kind of feathery in a way, and yet serious. It's old magic, established, practiced, and yet not malevolent but still light in its responsibility.... if that makes ANY sense whatsoever. I immediately liked the story for that reason and it absolutely captured the essense of the poem, I thought. Once it was clear, though that the magic was being used for no other purpose than to instigate a sexual encounter the story somehow lost some meaning and power for me. Now, I could be being a lazy reader there, and there might have been more inherent within the story than I'm giving credit for (and I sincerely apologize if that's the case), but somehow the beauty of the prose and its delievery seems to overshadow the substance of its theme, and I found that to be unfortunate.

Ultimately though, I thought in terms of the challenge that this was outstandingly well done. In a literal sense I thought the focus of the poem and the focus of the story were not entirely matched, but I'm well aware that the "literal" is not exactly what we're going for here. I really enjoyed this one. Thanks so much for posting it. As writer of silly stories, I'd certainly be interested to see more of your prose should you choose to continue writing it. It was beautiful--and speaks of a beautiful mind behind it.

 

[MLyons]

Remec --

What you've done here is a very narrative juxtaposition--even in the poem. At first glance, the poem seems to me to be not much more than a part of the story. It is perhaps the most emotional part of the story (for the killer that is), but it is still very narrative and literal in its approach and is not that far separated from the prose in the story you wrote. On the other hand, what the poem has that the story does not is that sense of meaning that the killer finds in the act he has just perpetrated. I had to read the story a couple times, and even now I'm still not sure that I'm not missing some of the subtleties.

From what I understand, the killer has been stalking Amber for some time, but I don't know why. What exaclty he does with her once he has her... I'm not entirely clear on either. If there's more significance to what the cop sees at the scene of the crime other than a bloody, filletted corpse, I'm not sure I'm seeing that either. Perhaps the answers all lie in the poem... Hmm.

Most interesting to me, though is the difference in emphasis between the poem and the story. In the poem, I get the impression that it's not the PERSON that's important to the killer, in terms of his "obsession". It's the ACT. In the story, I get more a sense that the person is more the object of his obsession than what he will eventually do to her. I'm not sure if that was intentional, or if perhaps I'm simply wildly misinterpretting what's happening. One thing is certain, I'm rambling right now...

I think in a literal, narrative sense, the poem seems to compliment the story nicely, although again, I feel that in the poem Amber could be replaced with anyone, and the meaning would remain the same for the killer. In terms of capturing the power of the poem in the story, however, I think it might be this matter of confused meaning that trips me up. In the poem the killer finds a sublime beauty in what he's doing, or has done. In the story, the beauty is externalized into ugliness, and in THAT sense, the poem and the story work against each other--but in other ways could compliment each other. Perhaps that, too, was intentional. In either case, I find it interesting, but I don't think a clear decision has been made, and because of that, I had a hard time knowing where to place my focus. Perhaps, with that focus in mind, the story could have steered me a little more in the right direction.

In any case, I found your contribution to take a slightly different (but no less valid) tact on the meeting the challenge set forth by Boo.

I hope this is interesting to you. It certainly is to me, and I want to thank you for sharing your work here, and allowing me to scrutinize it with my clumsy brain.

 

[MLyons]

BooMerengue --

I read your story thrice, and I still feel like a bit of a moron, but I'm afraid I'm not exactly clear what's happened. My impression is that the story starts a week after Cady performs the ritual that kills the two rapists. Unless I'm wrong, there is now then, some repercussions for her actions--perhaps the town is after her and her daughter--intent on ridding them of the witch atop the mountain for good. Is that correct?

It follows then that the poem is Cady's lament, and plea for her daughter's safety with the knowledge that she will be punished wrongfully or not for her own sins (in killing the two rapists). I'm probably so wrong about all this you're laughing at me right now.

If I'm not wrong, though... I think that's kinda cool. In fact, I think it's way cool!

What I love about it is that it's not immediately obvious. It takes a bit of brain-work for the reader to understand how the poem relates to the story, but there's a good payoff to it. The poem in that case, is the perfect compliment to the story--an epilogue in a sense, and at the same time much more--kind of an emotional center. It brings out the complexity that the story itself lacks, while the story fills in the backstory that heightens that complexity.

Now... and this is what I'm terrified of, I could be TOTALLY misinterpretting the story. Perhaps the first part of the story isn't what I think it is. If it isn't, perhaps I'm not a savvy enough reader to understand it, or perhaps the clues aren't clear enough.

Either way, the criticism I might make the story is that, although the events seem to lend themselves to emotional power and depth, the story seems unable to interest me emotionally on it's own. I simply don't find myself identifying with Cady or Maisie because I guess I just don't know them well enough. I don't relate to them as human beings before I'm meant to empathize with them and what they're going through. As I've indicated the poem seems to be the emotional center of the story, and kind of supplies that for me, but I would have liked to see a little of it in the story as well. Granted, though, that's a tall order for a story that must be less than 1500 words. It does come close though--it just wasn't quite solidified enough for me to find that sympathy I was looking for. It was a tiny bit distanced, I guess is the best way I have to say it. I didn't feel what Cady felt, and I would have liked it if I did.

Ok. I'm sure that my comments will be dismissed as soon as you realize that I misinterpretted the entire premise of your story, and for that I apogize in advance.

Once again, I'd like to thank Boomerengue and everyone for this fascinating challenge project, and for allowing me to lend my own questionable insight into the results of it.

 

[Angeline]

Angeline --

Given that I know next to nothing about what makes good poetry, I really liked Angeline's poem. It was a bit of a challenge for me, but I imagine that in some respects that's a good thing, and part of the intent. When I read the poem I got the sense that it was certainly about a cat, and it had undertones of witchcraft--of magic (with the mention of Pyewacket Girl as a familiar), which then can be interpretted more broadly in the sense that Pyewacket Girl is much more than just a cat. Perhaps she's a kind of temptress as well, not only as a cat but maybe as a human.

All this was inherent within the poem, at least for me. And granted I could have been reading into it, but as a reader, that's my perogative right?

That all said, I REALLY liked the story. Somehow it really skirts that line between poetry and prose, while at the same time, yes, telling a story. It's beautiful to read, powerful in its presentation and equally as economical. I was immersed in the world immediately. I thought the first half of the story was better than the second half, I think--as it manages to quickly create a relatable magical environment that somehow doesn't carry a lot of the baggage that a lot of halloween-esque tales of witchcraft sometimes get mired in. It's kind of feathery in a way, and yet serious. It's old magic, established, practiced, and yet not malevolent but still light in its responsibility.... if that makes ANY sense whatsoever. I immediately liked the story for that reason and it absolutely captured the essense of the poem, I thought. Once it was clear, though that the magic was being used for no other purpose than to instigate a sexual encounter the story somehow lost some meaning and power for me. Now, I could be being a lazy reader there, and there might have been more inherent within the story than I'm giving credit for (and I sincerely apologize if that's the case), but somehow the beauty of the prose and its delievery seems to overshadow the substance of its theme, and I found that to be unfortunate.

Ultimately though, I thought in terms of the challenge that this was outstandingly well done. In a literal sense I thought the focus of the poem and the focus of the story were not entirely matched, but I'm well aware that the "literal" is not exactly what we're going for here. I really enjoyed this one. Thanks so much for posting it. As writer of silly stories, I'd certainly be interested to see more of your prose should you choose to continue writing it. It was beautiful--and speaks of a beautiful mind behind it.

Thank you for your review, M.

You have captured perfectly what bothers me about writing erotica. Obviously I led Ardith and Tom to an erotica encounter, made it the point of the story because this is an erotic story site. And yet, I felt like I could have written as clearly or poetically or whateverly as I could muster, but the fact of "the big scene" dragged the story down. I tried to make the ending a bit quirky to tie everything together, but I'm always uncomfortable writing graphic sex scenes because I feel like it makes the overall piece of writing somehow less. It's the reason I rarely write graphic stuff in poems. Once I move from suggestion to actuality and put the facts in the writer's head, take away what their imagination can conjure (so to speak, lol), I feel I've weakened the writing.

Maybe one could write erotica that's purely suggestive and have it be very powerful, but I haven't done it yet--not in prose. Does anyone else feel this way, I wonder? I know Dr. Mab would disagree with me, but I wonder--this being Lit, after all--if anyone else sees what I mean....

 

[Remec]

Thank yous all around

I just wanted to add in my thanks for all of the commentaries and critiques. You've all been right in that some things in the story might be unclear or may raise more questions than anything else. I think if I was to explore the story and expand upon it, I might very well discover what some of those answers are.

But maybe not. <g>

I dunno if it's just me, but there are times when writing that the characters do, say, or reveal things that I didn't know about. I try to plot things through, but sometimes things just take on a life of their own. So to speak, anyways...

The idea I had in my head, as evidenced by the last line, was that the killer had, indeed, either been watching/stalking Amber or...at the very least...knew her. I'm still undecided whether the reverse is true. Perhaps she knew them, perhaps she was just overly trusting due to being in a place or situation where such trust would not be out of place.

Drat.

As if I didn't have enough stories and poems trying to work their way free...hehehe

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think that the issue of people seeing different thing in a work of art - always one of the chief pleasures of art itself - was part of what made this exercise so interesting to me. I enjoyed coming up with my own reading of the poem, then having another reading presented, essentially, through the prose story. Sometimes it was a welcome extension of my own reading; sometimes it redirected me; sometimes it added another layer on top of the meaning I had seen myself. I find depth of meaning the most interesting thing in any work of literature, and this way of presenting the poems gave me the instant pleasure of a new perspective.

Shanglan

 

[BooMerengue]

...running in apologizing profusely...

I really want to apologize for not doing this sooner. Real life, you know?

I don't know how to reply to so many great observations on my attempt here, so I'm just going to generalize.

I wrote my poem simply because of the phrase 'blood on the moon'. It kept ringing in my head because we had a Full Moon Challenge. As I understand it it means there will be or has been a death soon. Thats all I had in mind. It wasn't written because of some awful tragedy in my life. But after the poem was written I had to make a tragedy.

I, too, do not like stories of rape and murder. But since I had already written the poem, how else could I justify murder? It just seemed to be the only way. But for that reason both the rape and murder were downplayed (maybe not the right word)- it may have happened but I didn't feel I needed to write the details of it.

Calling down the Ancestors is a Wiccan ritual, as is Drawing the circle. I assumed that information was pretty well known- I was trying to save words so I just wrote it w/o explanation. Sorry for the confusion.

Doing flashbacks is a technique I haven't mastered. I didn't want to say "Looking back..." or "Going back to last week...". Originally I was going to write a story about a blood feud of some kind, involving an entire family and then neighborhood, which is pretty common to mountain folk. But again, I was limited by word constraints. I think it might have been better if I had stuck with that.

I think if dialogue is not done really well it bogs a story down. I spend too much time talking to myself to even try conversations. Maybe thats why Cady and Maisie both seemed a bit unreal. This story kept trying to grow on me- had I let it go it might have been more understandable but it also would have been about 2,000 words or more.

I set the word restraints myself because I wanted the challenge to be done similar to the way poetry is written... trim! trim! trim! And I also believe short storys are an art form of their own (and a becoming-lost art) and not so easy to write. Mine is proof of that!

Ok. All that being said, let me address a few individual remarks.

"I would make the argument too, that while all four poems seemed very erotic on their own, only Angeline’s story retained that eroticism. Belegon’s was more a stoiry of falling in love, Remec’s was erotic horror, and Boo’s was about magical revenge. I found that kind of surprising." dr_mabeuse? I never intended for my poem to be erotic in the classic sense. Call me whacked, but to me a 'magical revenge' is sooo much more fun than mere sex!

Varian? You're right. "The "Wringing my hands to wash out the sins" is not, as far as I can see, addressed in the story. Cady does not seem to feel guilt for what she has done, and it looks like she will not have to answer to the law for the deaths of the boys, either. Unless, of course, she is wringing her hands to wash out the sins of the two boys." This was not addressed in the story, and as the story evolved it became unlike Cady at all. She certainly is NOT a hand wringer, and she felt no guilt about what she had done. She showed no compunction at the destruction of the two youths, and I wouldn't have either. As I said earlier I had planned a different story; one where she may have caused some sort of redress but not been so eager to do so. However, the story sort of flowed out as I wrote, and I went the other way.

Wildsweetone... I think you missed the point, which is my bad- not yours. "Although I like the way you have ended the story, her Cady's last comment does not fit with the character you have allowed me to see. I did not expect that she would insinuate the sheriff's demise." She wasn't intimidating the Sheriff's demise- she was teasing him! Offering him a drink of the boys whiskey was the same thing. When she said what she did she was sort of *wink*wink telling him she knew about the boys death. In the longer version of the story (which isn't written yet) it would have been clearer how feisty Cady is!

"My impression is that the story starts a week after Cady performs the ritual that kills the two rapists. Unless I'm wrong, there is now then, some repercussions for her actions--perhaps the town is after her and her daughter--intent on ridding them of the witch atop the mountain for good. Is that correct?" MLyons? I think you misunderstood. The townspeople had no idea what the 2 boys had done, and were not interested in any kind of retaliation. The voices in the room were Cady's female
ancestors gathering their strength so Cady could do her work. I think my lack of skill in doing flashbacks contributed to your misunderstanding. But thats a learning thing for me. It shows me
where I need to work.

"I didn't feel what Cady felt, and I would have liked it if I did." You're right on the money here. Again, I believe it's because of the word restraints. In a longer version it would have been clearer. Thanks for pointing these things out.

GingerV! I think you grasped the story and it's relationship to the poem pretty well. "Trimming out some of the exposition could also give you space (darn that word limit) to show us more of M's reaction/involvement. The non-witch in me is still a little puzzled as to what "drawing her into the circle" meant…am I right in presuming there was another spell we didn't get to see? But most of all, you got under my skin girl, I want to know she's getting better. I want to see her again at the end. Some hint, not of a happy ending, but just some idea of who she is and how she is. The story is very much about her mother, but she's so key to it…it feels like she should be more present somehow." Yeah... I hated to leave her nearly out of it- she's a fascinating character. But it was the word restraint thing again. It felt to me like if I said much about her I soon was saying too much!



Shanglan? I saved you for last! You liked my story!! (in my best sally Fields imitation- chuckling) Thanks for your insight. Perhaps now that this is over we can discuss Camlann, A.D. 539 ... *looking at you wickedly! Arthur and Mordred? hmmmm.......

And a zillion thanks to all of you! I think this was so much fun! I wish there was a way we could continue this. Maybe someone will think of something. You guys are great!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Thanks very much, BooMerengue, for ... oh, blast. For your thanks, but that really doesn't sound very stylish or graceful, does it? Will you accept "earnest" as a substitute?

I set the word restraints myself because I wanted the challenge to be done similar to the way poetry is written... trim! trim! trim!

You know, I very nearly said something like this myself. I thought that you'd chosen an excellent format for poets, as it allows them to play to their strengths. Good poetry, to me, embodies compression, and I liked the fact that the limited story length supported that aspect of poetry.

Perhaps now that this is over we can discuss Camlann, A.D. 539

*cringe* Let the public floggings begin. When I first wrote that piece, I was very happy with it. However, as seems inevitable for me, the passage of time has illuminated all of its flaws. Fortunately, this means I might have some hopes of fixing them; that was, in fact, the project next on my list. Any advice you have for the improvement of the piece would be deeply appreciated. I hope it might be rather in your field of speciality anyway; much as I normally despise the term, I think I may have to term the thing a prose poem.

Shanglan

 

[BooMerengue]

Thanks very much, BooMerengue, for ... oh, blast. For your thanks, but that really doesn't sound very stylish or graceful, does it? Will you accept "earnest" as a substitute?



You know, I very nearly said something like this myself. I thought that you'd chosen an excellent format for poets, as it allows them to play to their strengths. Good poetry, to me, embodies compression, and I liked the fact that the limited story length supported that aspect of poetry.



*cringe* Let the public floggings begin. When I first wrote that piece, I was very happy with it. However, as seems inevitable for me, the passage of time has illuminated all of its flaws. Fortunately, this means I might have some hopes of fixing them; that was, in fact, the project next on my list. Any advice you have for the improvement of the piece would be deeply appreciated. I hope it might be rather in your field of speciality anyway; much as I normally despise the term, I think I may have to term the thing a prose poem.

Shanglan

Oh... you're way off! I LIKE the story! I rarely comment on Erotica. But I love your use of the language. I think you did a great job. But I'm a Mary Stewart aficionado. Maybe not the most sophisticated of writers, nevertheless she captured my imagination forever with her Arthur/Merlin 4 book set. Arthur boinking Mordred? Yikes!! Thats where I did the cringing. LOL A prose poem? Whatever for? It's a good story. I'll be more than happy to help however I can, tho. Just holler!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Arthur boinking Mordred? Yikes!! Thats where I did the cringing.

I am pleased that you enjoyed it. Yes, it is quite a transgressive little relationship there on so many levels. Honestly, I can't say what I find more disturbing about it - that it's his son, or that it's one of the most famous traitors in history and he's his soon-to-be victim. For some reason I have a weakness for eroticism on that tense love/hate boundary. I think I enjoy the chaotic potential of powerful emotions to stir each other, and the way that that can spiral out of all control or predictability.

Shanglan