This week: Let's Burn This Place Down Edited by: Brooke More Newsletters By This Editor
1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions
The Noticing Newbies Newsletter's goal is to make the newer members feel welcome and encourage them with useful information and/or links to make navigating Writing.com easier. Writing.com members of all ages and even veteran members can find useful information here. If you have specific questions, try visiting "Writing.Com 101" and/or "Noticing Newbies" . |
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A fun and interactive way of writing with a group. Imagine sitting around a campfire with a group of your friends. The leader of the campfire begins a story that is then passed around the group for their input. With up to 25 participants, you never can tell where these are going to lead!
Are you ready to tell you a story? Do you enjoy working with other authors? Come sit down right here, enjoy the warmth of an imaginary campfire. Close your eyes and imagine a group of your favorite authors all sitting around together as dancing flames light up the darkness around you. One of them starts to tell a story, then one-by-one the rest join in taking over where the last one leaves off.
Sounds great, doesn't it? That's why I can't understand why I don't see more of them here.
When you create a campfire here, you are the leader automatically. Your campfire can begin as soon as you have one other writer to contribute. After creation, you'll be able to manage your campfire in many ways. You can invite people to collaborate with you, edit all entries after they are posted, and even disable a contributor should you (or they) decide they don't want to participate anymore. The system handles all notifications so you can just sit back and enjoy the fire. After you invite someone, the system will email them and then upon approval (or denial) the system will automatically email you the decision. As I mentioned, the campfire can begin once you have one other writer to join you.
You will write the first part and once it's posted, the system will automatically notify the next writer in line that it's their turn to post an addition to the story. It's really well set up and makes your job as a leader very easy.
Many writers are solitary creatures choosing to create their own world without interruption. I understand that. However, I strongly recommend giving collaboration a try. It can be very rewarding and an exciting way to jumpstart your creative mind.
Trying new techniques helps you gain experience and learn your strengths and weaknesses.
Watching how another author attacks a scene or where they take a story can be enlightening and help you improve your own writing. This will improve your confidence as well.
It can help your creativity flow in different ways.
You've heard the phrase two heads are better than one. This is where you will see it first hand. Writing collabortively can be an eye-opening experience for an author.
Learning diplomacy and practicing social graces.
Working alongside another writer may require you to make a commitment. It's also a great way to learn to write impressive dialog. Why? Because you're actually talking to another person. Try it. You might be surprised at how much you learn.
Try it today and share your effortts with us!
Write and Review on! ~ Brooke
[Related Links]
This month's links are campfires from our community.
"South Pointe" by ChrisDaltro-Chasing Moonbeams
A Medium helps solve a Murder in the small town of South Pointe
"Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor
A random campfire to spark our muses!
"A Poem A Week Campfire I" by ♥Ho Ho HOOves♥
Extinguished After 4 Great Years and 121 entries of Writing Poetry!
"Miscreants Ball!" by Insidious Raven
The allure of three ancient wishes has modern day criminals in a deadly race for riches
"As Above, So Below" by JoeStrong
Magic is all around us-in our art, our dreams, our personalities, our life's work.
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Check out these stories from some of our newest members. Make sure you share a review and make them feel welcome.
Excerpt:
The messages started earlier this year. It seemed every time I removed the spray-painted words the vandals knew it. Soon the words would reappear when I had returned from work at the University. Fortunately the lock stymied them from getting inside the meteorological station, my escape.
With the press of right fingers on the entry pad, the door retracted into the wall. I hung the hat and rain slicker on hooks by the door. Water streamed off them, onto the stone floor and through the grill to the drain pipe.
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Excerpt:
"Hello there, young man. Fancy anything you see?" he said. A hood was covering most of his face. His voice was a sort of scratchy whisper, but with an ominous undertone Pete found unnerving.
He began to look at the objects sticking out of the pockets inside the large jacket. It was all mostly junk- silver spoons here, a pocket calculator there... until his eyes rested upon a pencil that was sticking out of its own pocket. He looked closer and found that a silver ring was looped around it. It wasn't particularly attractive in any way, but there was something special about it and Pete had a hard time looking away.
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Excerpt:
There are three things everyone knows about Tilly Archer. She kept to herself, had no friends and was very strange. So peculiar in her ways in fact that her own mother, Mrs Audrey Archer, who was a rather primp and proper woman, would remark on more than one occasion to the neighbours “That’s just our Tilly, puzzling girl, but I’m sure she will grow out of it.” However Tilly most certainly would not grow out of it, as sometimes odd behaviour runs in the family.
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Excerpt:
She walked forward, already extending her arm over her head, as soon as he watched the
yellow shine of a car appear in the corner of the street. Her hands were chubby, and her
fingers short —added to that, she was only a meter and a half tall—, so she had to extend
her whole body into the road in order to be visible among the crowd.
The taxi, blessedly, stopped in front of her. She leaped into it, and rattled the address of
Aunt Zee’s house.
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Excerpt:
On this sunny day, I also had to deal with rubbish, as per my usual routine. One lousy camper had left some rubbish, and I was forced to clean up after him. That's when I heard footsteps, gentle footsteps, coming from afar. As an immediate natural response, I jumped to hide behind a tree and peeped from the tree with the corner of my eye. I saw a little girl walking down a trail carrying a basket filled with food. I was able to smell the delicious food from a mile away. She looked rather suspicious, her clothing was fully red, with a cloak covering her head as if she was hiding from someone. I revealed myself and stopped her in her way to see who she was, asking her:
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Excerpt:
Have you ever been on the precipice of death?
I have.
It was an age ago, I was still a teenager.
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Excerpt:
The man’s heart was frozen solid. However, unlike the frost that clung to the trees, the frost around his heart had not appeared overnight. It had slowly appeared through the days and years that made up his life. Through this time, layer after layer formed around his emotions until, death and despair were both nothing to him. The man let out a depressed sigh as he put the pieces of his project together while reviewing the steps in his head.
~ ~
Excerpt:
Cries of a perfectly,
Imperfect human.
Cries buried deep inside
a glamorously astonishing smile.
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter! https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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I received some wonderful feedback to my last newsletter [#9373] "A Writer's Needs" and I'm proud to share it with you.
From Lance Chambers
In response to your query on whether contest rules stifle me or not, I'd say, at least for me, they provide a stimulating challenge.
I believe such guiding parameters paint a picture of the mission ahead, giving me boundaries within which I must stay. I recall from my days in the military we would be given rules of engagement for various scenarios in training. Once we were well aware of our can'ts, don'ts and won'ts, we were empowered and free to be creative in our approach to satisfying the mission.
Let's address this using a non-military motif: I suspect most folks have heard of the Food Network's "Chopped" TV show. The premise of each episode is competing chefs must prepare a meal using all the required food items given to them in a basket. I would submit to anyone that it must be daunting to create a dessert using sardines. The chefs would be hard pressed to present their creation under such rules, but in the end, whether they won or not, they learned and gained confidence they could overcome staggering limitations.
I should give an example from my own writings. Recently, I had entered a contest whereby there was to be no dialog for a 700 word or less short story. I had just finished reading a book from the "Elements of Fiction" series and felt emboldened to jump right in with a running start. This story was my second in two weeks after a 17 year hiatus from writing, and I savored the creative juices that flowed as I attempted to apply what I had learned from the readings. Daring to be adventurous, I wrote about an early morning, daily ritualistic exodus of rabbits leaving their resting place to venture a refreshing drink of water. My approach was to keep the story moving by painting a scene with the subject-action-setting triad in a show-versus-tell style. I fully enjoyed the opportunity.
So, despite the rule of no dialog, I believe I learned--if no other lesson was indeed learned--that I could apply recent lessons on the craft of writing to any assignment.
Have a great one!
From Jenstrying
First off thank you for including me in your Editor's Picks! I am like you when it comes to prompts and contests. What works for me once doesn't necessarily work again. Or for someone else. I find myself going through my writing books and magazines looking for inspiration. Sometimes I will find it in someone just having a similar experience and writing about it. Or maybe someone has written a piece that reminds me of something. So I dig that idea out of the mental garden and see what I can make with it.
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