Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in the Grove:
I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I’m feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child’s mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.
~E L Doctorow

Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that words make and the rhythm that sentences have.
~E L Doctorow

A writer’s life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure’s bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen. Except the act of writing.
~E L Doctorow

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PS: Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.
~E L Doctorow

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Posted from the Grove:
Prewritten for Thurs (01/31) 5 pm Pacific/8 Eastern is:
Write about snooping in another’s diary

On the Contest:
Thanks to information from Greenie, the last couple months of agonized frustration with new computer were resolved. Like magic. It was beautiful. Thank you, Greenie!

The tables are out to accept your submissions for the Wordgrove Prize. Tally boards are out, but will not be activated for voting until next Sunday. Since it is uncertain how many will enter in each category, the official vote will be held online at Wordgrove’s website instead of using the Tally signs. To view the list of entrants and titles from WG’s last contest (2010), click on any of the following links and proceed from there:

http://wordgrove.com/prose.html
http://wordgrove.com/poetry.html
http://wordgrove.com/journal.html

Voting will close at midnight on Valentine’s Day, Thurs, 2/14, for the simple convenience of being easy to remember. Totals will available online anytime, and will be updated daily in the Rules Book on the center riser of each table

The award ceremony is tentatively scheduled for Sat afternoon, Feb 26th, at 1pm Pacific time, 4pm Eastern. This will give our host, Sunny Music, and entertainers from the Society of There Musicians time to coordinate and prepare for the award ceremony. This will be a black tie event

Those entering the contest are responsible for redropping their work each week for the duration of the contest. The Indian puja table to the immediate east of the Prose, Poetry and Journal tables, is reserved for those participating but who wish not to enter the vote

The prize is a Silver Quill in each of the three categories, plus the Gold Torch for the Wordgrove Prize. A T$5,000 purse is awarded with each prize. Non-members are encouraged to enter

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@Writers Platform
Glass Table: The assumption is that everyone is working on their entries for the writing contest, because there are no new drops

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Prewritten: Tell a story in the form of a prayer

~Piffin: untitled
Dear God, let them run out of gas
Please, let the plan fall through
Although, failing that, dear Lord
Let my baby’s aim be true*

*Quoted

~BarTalk: Courage, Lord

~

Impromptu: blood, wild

~Piffin: Arena
Hired assassins, invisible ninjas recruited from gaming worlds rain death like Thor from the sky; the targets are pixels or people, but the kill is a uniform high

~Jessalee: ~hockey~
Red smears on the ice, fans go wild with blood-lust

~BarTalk: Never the Vampire

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Writers in Residence: On contest hiatus. A reminder to Wordgrove Nutters: Besides work on your contest entry, you are encouraged to look thru old material to feature in your pazs post-contest

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Quoted in the Grove:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. ~Albert Einstein

What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. ~Richard Feynman

Have patience with everything in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

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Posted from the Grove:

Prewritten for Thurs (01/24) 5 pm Pacific/8 Eastern is: Tell a story in the form of a prayer

Wordgrove is especially pleased to welcome returning members: Furlormyn and sot, as well as new members: Iamfaisal and HappyLove123

This week’s Post & Review will run longer than that allowed by club mail so that those wanting to view this week’s full newsletter, including Impromptu reviews, are directed to our online edition. New members wishing to catch up on news of our writing contest, or have an interest in past quotes and reviews, are also encouraged to visit our online edition at: http:wordgrovepost.wordpress.com

The Contest:
The closing line on last week’s news for the contest was as follows: ‘When partitions and virtual drives are mastered for the new computer, all will be well’

Ach, the bitter taste of presumption in this editor’s mouth. Drives and programs were installed, uninstalled, reinstalled. Pleas for help went out to Thumdar.com, and replies came back. Mountains of help were provided by Greenie, yet the computer competence of this editor continues to hover just below Idjit, and someone knowledgeable will have to be paid

As a result of these delays, Wordgrove’s writing contest must either be extended 2-3 weeks, or taken out back and shot behind the barn. The decision was taken not to resort to violence, but to coax our nascent contest back to life. The good news is that those having only one or two entries will have breathing space to work on a piece for another category, thereby increasing chances for a prize

Music is planned for the award ceremony (thank you Odile and Society of There Musicians). After mastering Wordgrove’s last ceremony (our first flawless program that wasn’t patterned after farce), Sunny Music will be returning as MC for this year’s presentation. Stay tuned for further developments

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@Writers Platform
Glass Table:

~Greenie: Flowing

The first two lines echo in the last two lines and reverberate here: Love and Pain go hand in hand / flowing together like hourglass sand

~Love, You Shout: A Spilling of A Dream of Love
Passion, exchanging selves in musty sex, the rhapsody of senses that make love eternally tempting; a dream set to words dripping sweat and lust

Pixel by Pixel
The line between dream and illusion is the distance between dreams and life; by bits and bytes the mystery soon revealed

~Feel Me Love, A Spilling of A Dream
After the passion, the nuzzling and pillow-talk that consummate the carnal act of love

Prewritten: 5-10 Suggestions for Prewritten & Impromptu

Ideas from other sources are pending, but the variety offered by current sources bodes well for future word games. Not only are others invited to share ideas, but it is possible to edit and add ideas to those already listed. If so, please mark as amended in the title with a date, and redrop. Participating to date: Stejovis, BarTalk

~

Impromptu:

~Piffin: .Waiting for the Peege.
It’s almost 11 at night, just when things start to go crazy in the ER; images impinge, stark, clinical, ominous; the anxious wait, because love wears the uniform of a nurse and she gets off in 5 minutes: a poem

~noxy: waiting in ER
A train of three haiku (bearing the gift of fashioned flowers), rides a looping track of tragedy thru a terminal called ER

~Jessalee: eye contact
Jaw muscles clenched with anxiety, uncertainty, eyes that scream their fear search the room for other eyes intent on the Door, waiting; a blonde enters, eyes empty of message, calls a name and delivers the vanilla news; briefly the terror of others in the room subsides into a smile for the lucky one,  then returns to eyes that turn away 

~Stejovis: The Best Medicine
Laughter is the best medicine. Every rule has the exception, and an Emergency Room is that place

~BarTalk: Surprise Ending

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Writers in Residence:

~Stejovis @Haiku Haven: Writing Haiku
After last week’s severe dressing down for desecrating the pure forms of haiku, a gentle manual for teaching the student who wishes to learn the classic ways. A must read for those with an interest in haiku. Also, see:

http://thewordshop.tripod.com/asian/Japan/haikudef.html

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Quoted in the Grove:

I don’t think people read poetry because they’re interested in the poet. I think they read poetry because they’re interested in themselves.
~Billy Collins

If you think of the story that you tell that’s your favorite personal story, or funny story, it doesn’t have flashy sentences. It doesn’t have too much detail. It just tells the story. That isn’t, for whatever reason, the way most people write books. But it seemed to me that there was no reason that it couldn’t be the way at least one person writes books. I’m going to stop writing the parts that people skim.
~James Patterson

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
~Alfred Hitchcock

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Posted from the Grove:

Prewritten for Thurs (01/17) 5 pm Pacific/8 Eastern is:
5-10 Suggestions for Prewritten & Impromptu
The usual two word format will be accepted, but ideas for new poetry/prose forms to try, themes to explore, etc. are encouraged

The Contest:
The red table with instructions for the writing contest isn’t out as promised, nor are the display tables out for early drops. Yet. Any reasonably superstitious sponsor of an event would consider the loss of its enabling instrument as an omen-bad juju-manifest warning, but the sponsor for the Wordgrove Prize is unreasonable in many ways and continues to soldier on. The tables will certainly be out for the 1/20 deadline. When partitions and virtual drives are mastered for the new computer, all will be well

@Writers Platform:  * previously reviewed
Glass Table:

~Piffin:
Christmas Limerick*
Piffin~Word Games~December*

~

Prewritten: limerick, non-humorous

~Stejovis: serious limerick
Sunrise and light, despite the aches that come with rising, the dawn is better far than the darkening of night

~Piffin: limerick, non-humorous
Green grow the fronds in the garden of love, a found place of happiness where even the weeds are looked on with fondness

~BarTalk: Love Story

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Impromptu: inheritance, citadel

~Piffin: .Citadel.
The grand promise, the great vision leaves one bitter and abandoned at the end, blindfolded, alone against the wall; the grotesque irony of being sacrificed on the altar of ones own dream; and still, the dream

~BarTalk: Inheritance

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Writers in Residence:

~Frankynoob @Faith Re-Tree-it: The Real Bible
Scroll with link to website where one can search the holy book by: verse, topic, individual

~Aradriel @Etude: Her, Open
In contrast to the precise gleam of scalpel blades, the tubes after surgery that drain the bitter smelling poisons; then the keloid smiles and ribbons, the mark of scars that mar beloved flesh

~GaryBob @NutNut Fountain: Somehow I Knew
A poem that might have a night job as lyrics in a song; the excited voice that whispers ‘he’s the one’, is the same silent instinct that knows when it’s over

~Stejovis @Haiku Haven: 10 No-Nos for Haiku Writing
The horrified agony, the excruciation of watching a treasured art form being violated and repeatedly brutalized finally finds its voice and cries, ‘Enough!’ Tho guilty on several counts, this editor swallows hard and manages to croak, ‘poetic license’

~Greenie @I like the rain: One 2 One 2 Blues
Waves of blue that aren’t the blue of skies, sapphires or blue eyes, but the dark yearning blues, the midnight blue that cries

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