“Monday” Writing Prompt #6

Due to a low number of submissions, the prompt below will be open until Monday, November 17, at 10:00m a.m.

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

Start your story with, “It did not turn out the way I thought it would…”

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, November 10, and I’ll post my favorite with next Monday’s writing prompt!

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Thank you to all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Shannon Barrington below:

Alma wanted nothing more than to tell him how she really felt about him before he died. She held the gun steady while she looked for the words.

She looked around the room she had deemed “hell”. Everything was perfect. Not a dust speck in sight. No dirt on the floor. Not even a loose hair from the dog could be spotted in the foyer. Martha Stewart had nothing on the décor. It was exactly the same set-up as last month’s cover of The World of Interiors. Even the white roses on the table were arranged in such a way that each petal was in perfect proportion to the other.

Below her feet, the gleaming white marble tiles shone like the sun and blended in with the lustrous mother-of-pearl banister. The expensive white pine -wood on the stairs was polished daily and looked new. Above her, the crystal chandelier dazzled the eyes with over 100 bulbs. Even the walls shone. They were painted snow-white with a white trim and molding.

To her right, she could see her reflection in the silver mirror. Standing at 5’, she seemed so out of place. Dark skin the color of molasses and her long black hair seemed to scream her presence in the opulent white room.

Looking back at him now, she saw his fear. It almost made her laugh. There he stood. All 6’5” of him. Shock white hair, white shirt and suit. Freshly polished white leather loafers on his feet. But his face, oh, his face. Finally his wildest dream had come true. Everything about him was white. The color of his skin had paled to almost translucent. It was too bad he couldn’t see himself. Oh how much he would have loved that!

Finally she spoke. As she pulled the trigger, Alma finally told him exactly what she’d wanted to say for years. “I’m NOT cleaning this up.”

Writers’ League Announces Violet Crown & Teddy Book Award Winners

The Writers’ League of Texas has just announced the winners of the 2008 Violet Crown and Teddy Book Awards, honoring outstanding books published in 2007:

• Violet Crown Award for Fiction: Harpsong, by Rilla Askew (right), Norman, OK (University of Oklahoma Press, May 2007)
• Violet Crown Award for Nonfiction: Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy, by Marcia Kaylakie (below right), Austin TX (Texas Tech University Press, October 2007)
• Teddy Children’s Book Award: Cures for Heartbreak, by Margo Rabb (left), Austin, TX (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, February 2007)

The winners will be acknowledged at the Writers’ League Book Awards Ceremony at the Texas Book Festival in Austin at 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 1, in Room 2.026 of the Capitol Extension at the State Capitol in Austin.

The Violet Crown Book Award, founded in 1991, is named for O. Henry’s description of Austin as the City of the Violet Crown and recognizes excellence in fiction and nonfiction. The Teddy Children’s Book Award has recognized outstanding children’s books since 1996. For the first time, the awards are open to authors who are not members the Writers’ League of Texas. Each winner receives a cash price of $1,000 in recognition of outstanding books published the previous year.

Past Violet Crown winners include Texas Monthly columnist and novelist Sarah Bird, mystery author Mary Willis Walker, novelist Amanda Eyre Ward, novelist Clay Reynolds, poet Jack Myers, journalist Carlton Stowers, and NPR commentator Marion Winik. Teddy winners have included Diane Gonzalez Bertrand, Angela Shelf Medearis, Kimberly Willis Holt, and John Erickson.

The Bookish Brunch on Nov. 2

The Writers’ League of Texas presents
The Bookish Brunch

Honoring Texas Book Festival Authors
Sarah Bird, Bill Bishop, Bill & Cheryl Jamison, and Marion Winik
And the 2008 Violet Crown and Teddy Award Winners

10 a.m. to noon Sunday, November 2 At the home of Michele Kay & Robert Schultz in Austin $50 per person (advance reservations required) Signed books by authors will be available at the event. Proceeds benefit the Writers’ League of Texas Reservations may be made online. The Writers’ League of Texas is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations. All deductions are tax-deductible as allowable by law. Fair-market value of the brunch is $25 per person.

Writers’ League Elects New Board Members

The Writers’ League of Texas elected four new members to its board of directors and reelected three current directors at the organization’s meeting on October 16. The new members are:

• Paco Ahlgren (above right), an Austin economist and financial analyst and author of the 2007 novel Discipline
• Susan Blount (above left), marketing consultant, Austin
• Dr. David F. Ciambrone (right), a mystery novelist and retired scientist and professor, Georgetown
• Michele Kay, former business editor of the Austin American-Statesman and faculty member at St. Edward’s University, Austin

Three current board members were reelected to three-year terms:

• Louis T. Brusatti, Dean of the School of Humanities at St. Edward’s University
• Irma Flores-Manges, Austin Public Library branch manager
• Evelyn Palfrey, a former Austin municipal court judge and author of four novels

The new and reelected directors begin their terms in January 2009

Kristy’s Magical Discovery

A little bird (thanks Elaine!) told me that WLT member Kathi Appelt is a National Book Award Finalist! Wowza! Did I mention it was her debut novel?

The Texas Book Festival schedule is up here. Don’t forget to come visit us in booth # 123.

“Monday” Writing Prompt #5

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

Begin your essay with the following sentences: “Alma wanted nothing more than to tell him how she really felt about him before he died. She held the gun steady while she looked for the words.”

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, October 13, and I’ll post my favorite with next Monday’s writing prompt!

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Thank you to all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Jane Bryant below:

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask the woman who is suddenly sitting next to me on the only occupied bench in the park.

“My mother’s in the heart hospital,” she says like we know each other and nods toward the building behind us. I give a quick

The Mystique of Critique

The Mystique of Critique:
The 20 Commandments of Critiquing

7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 16 * Writers’ League Resource Center * Free!

Here’s a way to meet your match — for critique groups, that is! If you’ve got a work in progress – whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, essays, poetry, etc. — and you’d like to get some feedback, come on over!

Jo Virgil, community relations coordinator at Barnes & Noble Sunset Valley, will share her 10 Commandments of Critiquing and 10 Commandments of Being Critiqued. Then we’ll break up into small groups and practice the commandments.

• What to bring? 5 copies of 3-5 pages of a work in progress
• What you’ll get: Feedback on your work, critiquing practice, new contacts, and just possibly a writing group of your own

We’ll also elect new board members for the League. So put something in writing and come on over!

Writers’ League wish list

19 inch (or larger) T.V. for use in classroom

shredder that can eat staples

LCD Projector for use in classrooms

cookies

Monday Writing Prompt #4

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

You are sitting on a park bench on a Saturday morning.  A stranger sits down next to you and says, “I’m sorry, but I have to tell someone, or I think I’ll go crazy…”  Write what happens next.

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, October 13, and I’ll post my favorite with next Monday’s writing prompt!

Thank you to all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Yvonne Feinleib below:

I have two gray cats – sisters rescued from Austin’s Town Lake Animal Shelter as tiny kittens. One is slender and prone to bouts of aggrieved miaows; the other, plump and fluffy with a perennially confused expression that resembles that of the owls who breed in the hollow of an oak tree in our Barton Hills backyard every year.

I discovered my special power in a most unfortunate way – when I reached down and stroked the plumper of the cats on my way downstairs to pour out my morning coffee, and her form shifted beneath my hand into a svelte longer body exactly like that of her sister. My touch now had the power to make a fat animal instantly of normal weight.

Of course, I no sooner absorbed the apparent implications than I foolishly rushed upstairs and attempted to shake my partner of 16 years awake. His sleepy expression vanished as he sat up and clutched at his formerly thick waistline, now a flat stomach with the light outline of well-defined abdominal muscles visible even in the dim light of our bedroom.

“What did you just do?” he exclaimed, throwing back the covers and trying to stand up, then almost tripping as his formerly tight pajama bottoms headed for the floor. I caught a glimpse of his newly slender thighs before he dragged his clothing back into place, clutching the unnecessary folds of cloth at his waist and looking more scared than I had ever seen him before.

“I don’t know” I responded, rubbing my hands on my own belly in a vain attempt to produce the same result. “I don’t know what I did.”

“Well, undo it!” he demanded, glaring at me. He obviously wasn’t awake enough to recognize that I had just given him his dearest wish, a body that appeared twenty years younger than his chronological age.

“I don’t know how” I shrugged. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

He rubbed his eyes and then stared at me as if he had never seen me before.

“I need to get dressed” he said quietly, his tone so flat that it took me a second to recognize the loathing in his familiar voice.

Mute, I left the bedroom and sat downstairs in the kitchen sipping my coffee as he dressed and rushed from the house without his customary kiss good-bye.

I never again changed anyone’s body without first asking their permission.

Today, I travel the world making fat people thin.

Bariatric physicians hate me, and so do the manufacturers of over-sized clothing. I’m not very popular with pharmaceutical companies, either (although one of them offered me more than a billion dollars over the course of my lifetime if I would agree to stop touching fat people).

I have five full-time secretaries who handle my mail and respond to all thank-you letters with an excellent facsimile of my signature. My staff, travel arrangements, and personal protection are all provided by the World Health Organization, as I have personally reduced global deaths from diabetes, heart disease and certain forms of cancer more than any previous health initiative.

On one day I will be in a huge meeting hall, walking back and forth, up and down the rows of eagerly waiting fat people, some in wheelchairs, some just ten pounds overweight, and the next I will be visiting a home-bound man who is of such great weight that he has not been able to leave his home for the past three years. I have touched newborn infants and elderly people with a dying wish to return to the weight of their youth. There is no continent, no country, no major city, no cultural, ethnic or religious group that has ever turned down my offer of a visit.

Only once has my special power ever failed me.

Someday, I believe that I will be only the fat person left on earth.