The Mighty Pen #43

The Mighty Pen flash fiction contest is a just for fun writing contest (inspired by my wonderful husband). I post the beginning of a story – and you post an end! I will choose a winner and several honorable mentions. The contest is open until Sunday night and the winner is announce on Monday where I feature them on my blog. Check out past winners on the tab above.

Note: This is a family friendly blog – so please keep it PG rated. Thanks!

The Beginning

With trembling hands she opened the book...

Three Words #43

One of my favorite writing games is something I call three words. I post three words and encourage you to write a flash fiction piece containing those three words. If you would like to challenge me – post three words for me and next week I will post a piece of flash fiction using your words. Enjoy!

Three Words

• Red
• Rug
• Vast

Flash Fiction

Using the three words: Black, Bowl, and Blame (from last week.)

The blame would fall to her. No matter what the truth was, the blame would fall to her.

Ashti looked down at the broken shards of the glass bowl. A priceless treasure of the masters, destroyed. Then she turned to the cowering servant murmuring in the corner.

Sighing, she lifted the remnants of the bowl and wrapped them in a black cloth. Then marched off to fulfill her duty.

Prompt Tuesday #44

Every Tuesday I post a writing prompt and my response. It gives me a chance to exercise my writing muscles outside of my WIP, and hopefully inspire you to write. So enjoy my flash fiction piece and post your own in the comments!

Prompt

Finding prompts is hard. I try to find a verity from different sources and it takes time for me to locate good ones. Today I stumbled on a prompt generator which was really fun. Here are a few of the prompts I found there:
Source: Prompt Generator

"A noise outside awakens you one night. You look out the window and see a spaceship. Write what happens next."

Response

My window rattles, waking me from a light sleep. Sighing in frustration I extract myself from the tangled blankets and trip across the floor to the window. Leaning on the seal I look out the window into the dark back yard.

A ring of swirling colored lights lights up the area right in front of my window. I watch the lights for a second, amused. "Josh," I whisper to myself, shaking my head.

I climb the stairs very slowly. Once across the hall I place my hand on the doorknob to my brothers room. Taking a deep breath I throw open the door and scream, "ALIENS!", it the best terrified voice I can.

Josh jumps and screams like a girl. After the shock wears off, his friends begin laughing hysterically.

My eyes meet Josh's. I know I will pay for this but I don't care. I turn away and return to my bed.

My Publishing Dream - Like a Pheonix

I had an interesting conversation with my Aunt over the weekend. It started with her asking me how easy it would be to learn HTML - then shifted to talking about self publishing eBooks. It was like a catalysis around which several disjointed thoughts combined into one: I think I want to be self published.

Whoa! Yes it blew me away too. After my soul searching and deciding to go the traditional route I finally find me changing my mind.

Why? Well, let me tell you about two experiences that helped me realize what my dream really is.

First - I attended a meeting of my local chapter meeting in which the question was posed to me what I want to get out of writing. I did not mention money - not at all. For two reasons - it is not all that important to me and I realize that the chances of being a millionaire off my writing is very slim. I was surprised when this attidude was scoffed at. It made me want to never be published if I have to deal with that kind of attitude.

Second - I got my first rejection letter. At first it made me all excited and ready to submit to the next publisher. But somehow that never happened, my fire kind of fizzled out.

This all made me realize that maybe I don't need to be traditionally published to realized my dream.

So I am on the brink of deciding if I should let one dream die so that another can rise from its ashes. Or to hold on to my original dream.

Have you ever had to give up on one dream in order to realize another - that might be better?