Tag: competition

March 2012 Short Story Competition

And now for Something Completely Different!!

Below there is a list of questions for you to answer.

On a scrap of paper jot down a few ideas that spring from the questions and try not to look ahead to the next question until you have written your response to the previous one. Give yourself a couple of minutes at least for each question, if you can .

(I will insert picture spacers to help stop your eye jumping to the next Q)

Use the ideas that come from the questions to help you start a story… you can of course remould your answers as your story dictates.

Here goes:

QUESTION 1

Think of a person you know by sight but haven’t met properly. Describe that person – What he or she looks like, maybe their character traits, a favourite colour etc…

Continue reading “March 2012 Short Story Competition”

Photo Competition # 24

“Food, glorious food!”

I know we have done ‘Eat drink and be merry’, but this time I want the emphasis on the food itself. Photographs of food in any shape or form. It must be edible by most sensible humans. Points will be awarded for the deliciousnessness of the subject. Hint, I am not a vegan. I appreciate that OZ, for example, would be turned on by a bouncy woolly lamb gamboling in the meadow, but he is more likely to succeed if that lamb is photographed on a spit, slowly roasting over a fire. Continue reading “Photo Competition # 24”

Window (Short story competition)

It took a few moments for her to realise that the man she thought had been waving at her through the window was in fact cleaning it. In readiness for a response she had already subconsciously improved her posture, moved her face into a smile and was just on the point waving back when she simultaneously realised her mistake – it wasn’t Alasdair – and felt a shop assistant observing her with an amused expression.

“In which aisle would I find eggs?” she said turning the ghost of the smile on the girl, determined that she should stay in control and suppress the deep heat of a flush that had already started, “And crystallised ginger?” She turned the trolley in anticipation, “I can’t seem to find anything since you had a change around in here.”

Later, after she had piled all the bags into the car boot she returned to the store’s cafe with The Guardian to have a latte, an almond croissant and two paracetamol. She pulled her glasses and an A5 notepad out of her hand bag and flipped over a few pages of lists to find today’s scrawl and started ticking and adding until she come across something, in her own handwriting that she couldn’t remember adding, and it was completely indecipherable. It seemed to say jumper bernies. She sat and stared at it for some while, but nothing clicked and in the end she put he notepad away and returned to her coffee and croissant. God, she thought, am I going completely mad? She picked up the newspaper and glanced at the front page before opening it at the crossword.

The first clue she glanced at was 1 Down:  What can a sticking plaster sing at Yuletide? (2, 4, 4, 3, 9). She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Shut her eyes and leaned back to think.

“Well I never! Hello, Vicky,” said a man’s voice.

She looked up to find a tall, elegant man smiling at her. She frowned lightly,

“I’m sorry?” Continue reading “Window (Short story competition)”

Partnership (for Creative Writing competition November 2011)

“Embezzlement, Max?” I heard, and my interest, having wandered, was immediately refocused. “A financial fraud accusation is very serious,” said John, speaking in his measured way. By now I had all my attention on Max. What was all this about?

“I don’t use the term lightly,” I heard my husband say, “and it pains me as Andrew is my oldest friend.”  I glanced at Andrew, who looked so shocked and uncomfortable. “But the figures just don’t stand up,” said Max. “There is a very big anomaly. And I’m surprised,” he said turning to Jackson, the accountant, “that you hadn’t identified a problem yourself, Ian.”

“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” Andrew said, looking around the room. He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t now,in public. Then turning to Max he said, “You know me, Max, I’d never put the partnership in danger. This can all be sorted out with another look at the figures, I’m sure.”

“Just what I arranged,” said Max, “I have hired an independent firm of auditors. In fact they are looking at the books as we speak.”  There was uproar at this. How could he go behind everyone’s back and arrange an independent enquiry? When I looked around the room Andrew and Ian were silent. Ian’s face was like a storm cloud. Continue reading “Partnership (for Creative Writing competition November 2011)”

Results, for ‘Perspective Competition’ (which closed 4th November 2011)

Potential perspective photographs have been presenting themselves to me, or literally pouncing out at me ever since I set the challenge.

I took this one in Weston-Super-Mud, for example!

Continue reading “Results, for ‘Perspective Competition’ (which closed 4th November 2011)”

Distortion

I have been looking out for patterns in every day things in response to the current photo competition

“…the theme for the next competition is simply that: ‘Patterns.’ No queensbury rules for this one, it’s rough and tumble, anything goes – in other words, images may be manipulated in any way wished to produce the effect desired by the entrant.”

A few years a go my Cyclo man came home with a new waste paper bin for the newly furnished office, made of that fine metal mesh that was particularly popular at the time. Continue reading “Distortion”

On Nursery Rhymes

In the early 70s I was studying for my National Certificate in Electrical Engineering. I was now 30 something, before ‘Friends‘, and at a time when being 30 meant being an adult and not some late developing adolescent. It was also the time when, for reasons unknown to me, it was decided that engineers lacked ‘culture’, and so lessons in ‘cultural studies’ were an essential part of the course. Having two young children at the time,my chosen subject for a particular presentation was Nursery Rhymes and their origin. Janus’ post on the poetry competition reminded me of this. The nursery rhyme books are in the loft, but unlike the 70s when there was no Internet available to me, I don’t have to search the loft for them.
Continue reading “On Nursery Rhymes”