#WeekendWritercize 5 WINNERS!

All three of our #WeekendWritercize guests picked a different side, all equally interesting, so I have elected to exercise my right as judge and send all of you a #WeekendWritercize badge!!

Pick it up here:

and please display it proudly on your blog!

The winners are:

Lisa McCourt Hollar - for women

Dawn M. Hamsher - for men

Susan Kane - for God

Congratulations!!

On another note - my husband sprung very happy, very last-minute travel plans on me over the weekend so I am leaving on a jet plane shortly and will be back the beginning of March.

Writercize and #WeekendWritercize will be on hiatus until I return!

#WeekendWritercize 5 - Pick a Side

Welcome to the fifth edition of the #WeekendWritercize competition!

Join in and spread the word to friends and family! 

(...and if you haven't had a chance to read entries from the last four weeks, check them out on the #WeekendWritercize tab - talent abounds)

writercize: This week is debate week. Pick a side for the following question and write a compelling argument. The question is:

Who rules the world - men or women?

(Hint: Think like a lawyer, even if you don't believe in the side you choose, provide the evidence to make the jury believe! Also, think of this as your closing argument, meaning ... you do not need to directly rebuttle any of the other entries.)

To enter the competition, leave your entry as a comment below. Be sure to include your Twitter handle and link to your blog or website. Tweet and Facebook fellow entries using the hashtag #WeekendWritercize.

Since this blog is used by teachers and students, I kindly request that you abstain from profanity and gratuitous violence. (In other words, keep it PG-13.) If your story can't be told without, just provide a link to your post on your own website along with a disclaimer.

Competition closes at 11:59 p.m. Sunday night (Pacific time) - no entries accepted after that. Winner announced Monday.

This week's winner and honorable mention(s) will receive a #WeekendWritercize Winner badge to proudly display on their website.

Thanks and good luck!

Five Words - writercize #162

Phew! Ever have one of those weeks where your brain is chasing its tale in circles, and you just can't get out of your head's auto-replay button? That's me this week! As much as my brain is telling me that the extent of my writing skills is parallel to Bart Simpson rewriting a single sentence infinite times on a board, my fingers are trying to fight that and break out with something new!

So, while I still appear incapable of writing an all-new writercize, I will forfeit power to my fingers and allow them to go, go, go with a recycled writercize. This is an exercise where I give you five words and you create something inspired by them. The words are new, but the concept is old!

writercize: Create a short story or scene using the following words:

• assist
• next
• station
• teaspoon
• other

(randomly selected by flipping through the pages of Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and pointing at a word - I have yet to read the book so it should not heavily influence the story)

Please share your result as a comment or link to your response on your website!

Click "read more" for writercizer sample response.

Bio-Poem - writercize #161

My writing mind is all over the place today. It has been an insanely busy news day here in Southern California between the Prop 8 ruling and news about Miramonte Elementary, the LAUSD school that made international news for removing all teachers and support staff until further notice due to the two arrests made last week of teachers engaging in lewd behavior. I have been listening to the news nonstop, and my journalism brain is kicked into high gear, which means I am imagining questions that should be asked and creating stories in my mind even if they are not on paper.

Beyond the news, I decided to "run" the Picture Book Marathon this month, which means that I have committed to write 26 first drafts of picture books in the course of a month. I have four on the books so far, which means I have no more rest days or I will have to double up over the next couple weeks! The good news is I read the first drafts out loud to my kids this morning, and they were full of giggles, so I feel like I am on the right track and inspired to keep going.

Add in a little flash fiction here and there, over at #5MinuteFiction today, and my mind is screaming for a creative break! Therefore, I will treat it to a bio-poem.

A bio-poem is an autobiographical poem that follows a distinct pattern. My parents assigned it to their fifth graders to get to know them at the beginning of the school year. I had largely forgotten about them until a couple weeks ago when I ran across one on a post by a member of the Group Blogging Experience, aka GBE 2. When I saw it I stashed it deep into my mind for use on a Day of Limited Writercize Inspiration, or a Day of Overthinking, as AA Milne may have described it. (Gotta love how you could gauge the importance of any topic through his use of capitalization.)

Hopefully you find this mindless exercise as relaxing as me!

writercize: Write a bio-poem, using the following formula, as posted on the University of Chicago website:

(First name)-

(Four adjectives that describe the person)

Son or Daughter of (your parents names)

Lover of (three different things that the person loves)

Who feels (three different feelings and when or where they are felt)

Who gives (three different things the person gives)

Who fears (three different fears the person has)

Who would like to see (three different things the person would like to see)

Who lives (a brief description of where the person lives)

-(last name)

Click "read more" for writercizer sample response. Please feel free to share yours in the comment section, along with a link to your blog!

#WeekendWritercize 4 Winner - Mike Miller

Thank you to all the #WeekendWritercize entries this week!  There is so much mystery and intrigue, and as usual I am impressed by your talent.

As a reminder, the challenge was:

writercize: Write the opening to a novel with the following title:

Five O'Clock Shadows. Any genre ok. "Opening" may be interpreted as opening sentence, paragraph or scene. Make me want to read more!

 

See all the results here.

Congratulations to the #WeekendWritercize 4 Winner:

Mike Miller

Tough guys do cry.

 

I chose Mike's novel opener because something major has clearly happened to his friends that we don't know about, but he dealing with it by obsessing about something as mundane as the number of items on his "Tremendous Twelve" diner plate. I can envision myself counting the items and wondering if the restaurant can't count or if they forgot to put something on the plate but staying silent. I love that he is so distraught by this that he cries over it to the waitress, who responds in a snarky diner manner, imperfect grammar and all. I like that Mike shows me that this man's world is crumbling around him, that he is so completely lost, by how he relates to his food. I want to know what is happening.

Pick up your badge below! Congrats again! I will message you for the gift card!

Honorable Mention:

Sarah Aisling / @SarahAisling

The depth of this opening drew me in, to see the work that this person has gone through to make his victim comfortable in his presence, from walking into an apartment building nearby to allowing her to see him. He is clearly a man from her past since he has changed his appearance, so I am curious to know their back story. I also really appreciate a two word hanger at the end.

Sarah, pick up your badge below:

Once again, congratulations to ALL of the entries and thank you for participating!  I love reading what you write every week and look forward to seeing what you create next week!

All Entries:

Christopher (chm)

Mike Miller

Dawn M. Hamsher

LupusAnthropos

Aurora Lee

Sarah Aisling

#WeekendWritercize 4 - In Title

Welcome to the 4th edition of the #WeekendWritercize competition!

Join in and spread the word to friends and family! 

Badges and coffee up for grabs this week.

(...and if you haven't had a chance to read entries from the last three weeks, check them out on the #WeekendWritercize tab - talent abounds)

writercize: Write the opening to a novel with the following title:

Five O'Clock Shadows.

Any genre ok. "Opening" may be interpreted as opening sentence, paragraph or scene. Make me want to read more!

To enter the competition, leave your entry as a comment below. Be sure to include your Twitter handle and link to your blog or website. Tweet and Facebook your own as well as fellow entries using the hashtag #WeekendWritercize.

Since this blog is used by teachers and students, I kindly request that you abstain from profanity and gratuitous violence. (In other words, keep it PG-13.) If your story can't be told without, just provide a link to your post on your own website along with a disclaimer. Your entry will still be considered.

Competition closes at 11:59 p.m. Sunday night (Pacific time) - no entries accepted after that. Winner announced Monday.

This week's winner and honorable mention(s) will receive a #WeekendWritercize Winner badge to proudly display on their website, and to sweeten the deal, a $5 Starbucks card is at stake!

Thanks and good luck!

Pulling a Komen - writercize #160

Most everyone who follows the news, health care, nonprofits and civil liberties knows that the nonprofit Susan G. Komen foundation elected to cut funding to Planned Parenthood this week. Komen is best known for their pink ribbon and walk for the cure to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness.

Citing the excuse that Planned Parenthood is currently under investigation (for allegedly using federal money to pay for abortions, an investigation spurred by social conservatives) and Komen wants their donors to know that money will be used towards breast exams rather than lawyers, Komen pulled the plug on funding. The catch is, the money was already earmarked for use towards breast exams and cancer treatment, so Planned Parenthood could not have used the money elsewhere, nor did they ever plan to.

The decision to withdraw funding caused a huge angry backlash across media, social networking and women's groups and several threatened to stop donating to Komen. Reportedly, at least one top Komen executive resigned over the issue, but due to privacy agreements with Komen the reason can not be confirmed.

So, mere days after the announcement to suspend funding, Komen pulled a 180 and announced today that they will give Planned Parenthood after all.

Did they not realize the firestorm they would raise prior to the first announcement? They had to have known this would be a controversial decision, and taken that into account. Yet, they are now backpedaling and wishing for a time machine that would drop them off before the whole mess.

The problem is, the proverbial cat is now out of the bag. Anti-abortion activists who donated this week after Planned Parenthood funding was cut feel cheated, and pro-choice activists are left asking why they should trust Komen's flip flop rather than donate money directly to the screeners and examiners themselves. Komen has now succssfully alienated both sides of the spectrum and confused the middle ground. The country is left wondering how in the world Komen's PR department is going to save the nonprofit from any deeper trauma as the nonprofit case study of the year unravels.

All of this makes a writer who loves playing with words quite happy to coin a new phrase, pulling a Komen. To pull a Komen means to hastily retract a business decision in the face of public fury. It will now be part of my personal vernacular, and particularly applicable in knowingly controversial or political decisions.

I would love to see what phrases you writercizers can come up with, using the names of businesses, celebrities or otherwise notable people.

writercize: Take a name of a notable business, celebrity or person who is associated with either a famous mistake or good deed and place it in a descriptive phrase. Include the definition (and a sample sentence if you dare!).

Please leave your phrase here as a comment - I would love to see what you creative writercizers come up with!

Click "read more" for two writercizer sample responses: to pull a Komen and to be Gored.