Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in the Grove:
If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.
~Buddha

I like reality. It tastes like bread.
~Jean Anouilh

End Quote by ~Oscar Wilde
When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

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Posted from the Grove:
Piffin continues to mend, slowly. Some days are better than others (so unusual in medicine); she’s waiting for her strength to return. She’s receiving the very best care that love can provide. We continue to be grateful

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A brief personal announcement:
Wordgrove uses WordPress.com to host the WG Post & Review, the club’s newsletter you are currently reading. WordPress recently began a new series called, Longreads, with a length requirement of 1500+ words. I recently completed an exercise from Word Games that meets this minimum with an epilogue added. I like it, and now want to see if the story has legs. Does it have a place in the real world?

It’s posted in the blog, from: The Wordgrove Files. If interested in helping move it along, or just curious, the title is: comes a knock
http://wordgrovefiles.wordpress.com

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Somebody picked up an ear worm before Thurs’ Word Game, brought it to Writers Platform and promptly infected everyone. It’s a catchy tune, but other images from the song seemed to resonate more; memories and wished-for-memories-that-never-happened, something more than nostalgia. Now it’s your turn. This is no piercing view thru a telescope or a microscope; this is love seen thru a kaleidoscope

Afternoon Delight by: Starland Vocal Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGRdX5sUAs

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Prewritten for Thurs (04/17) @6pm PT/9 ET is: steel, sunset

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@Writers Platform
Glass Table: No new drops

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Prewritten: broom, teabag

~Greymane: Voices
There’s something behind the voices, something more than the fears, the musings and cravings, the paid-up residents in his head; a battle for supremacy, oneself against the babble; shunned for their garbled wisdom, the voices go quiet instead

~BarTalk: duck, duck, goose

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Impromptu: haiku on crickets

~Piffin: haiku (quoted in full)

Crickets; window screens
Beads of sweat in candlelight
Safe word forgotten

~Greymane: haiku (qif)

Long hot nights
Lonely creatures beckon
Summer’s song

~Jessalee: haiku (qif)

small bug chirping loud
i move closer to his song
and then he’s silent

~BarTalk: haiku

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Writers in Residence

~Greymane: Darker Than Dreams
Despair and lost hope have a remedy when the fight goes on too long; the die is cast, only the outcome in question; which world will she wake to come the dawn

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Quoted in the Grove:
At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.
~Maurice Maeterlinck

I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.
~Thomas Alva Edison

The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one.
~Joan Baez

~~

Posted from the Grove:
It’s hard to describe what passion brings to a conversation, but you know it when you see it. You’d pay for a ticket to it. Thurs it was free

The subject hardly matters when someone is really keen on it and good at it, and someone else is keen with interest, with enough knowledge to ask good questions, and there is a rapt audience. This editor would have paid twice what it cost to get in. Piff and Stej should take a bow for their concert level performance

Their enactment married O-scale modeling and an online gaming world that requires tiered-thinking able to see forward in time. Strategic as well as tactical thinking is required. A door opened into dark table-top worlds, handcrafted worlds of 3-D dystopia for multilayered chess games played out in deadly earnest. Tournament season is lining up

~

This Is Your Brain on Writing, New York Times article
How writing changes and rewires the brain
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-brain-of-writers.html?emc=eta1

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‘Ginger Leigh’, the third novella in the four part “Noble Gabe Alone” series will remain out on the granite display table (next to the Shoji hut in WG), until the end of the month. It is of intimidating length spread out in Books (18, by number), but is a mere 25k words, a mini-novel weighing in at just under 100 pages. Copy / paste into a favorite text editor makes for easier reading. Altho set in the real world, the story remains There-based. Loosely pigeon-holed, its category: literary adventure/fantasy

The action moves quickly and is varied. Regular attendees of Thurs Word Games can request a Word.doc of it that includes chapter links on the index page. This requires feedback, or the author will ask T$2,000 for the copy. The whole point of the exercise is to find the problem areas and hear suggestions before starting the penultimate round of edits. A pat on the back doesn’t help and won’t do

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It is wonderful being able to welcome Piffin back, but we are losing Beth (whitefeather) to another world this week. She is leaving game for other challenges and a different kind of beauty. Happy hunting, Beth-it’s-not-too-late. You are always wanted back

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Prewritten for Thurs (06/26) @6pm PT/9 ET is: teabag, broom

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@Writers Platform
Glass Table: No new drops

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Prewritten: black sheep, spawn

~Greymane: Further Than it Seems
The terrible journey of dreams that goes worlds deeper than nightmares; trapped with the knowledge they aren’t real and you can go home again at dawn, but trapped nonetheless

BarTalk: Sons of Spawn

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Impromptu: By mutual consent, there was no impromptu

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Writers in Residence

~Greymane @The Greyed Escape: Descending
Favorite line #1:
Angel on the parapet, flirting with the fall.
Favorite line #2:  …
We all despise our own disguise that forces us to crawl.

There’s nothing more to add

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Quoted in the Grove:
A pedestrian is a man in danger of his life. A walker is a man in possession of his soul.
~David McCord

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.
~Roger Miller

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
~Tom Lehrer

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Posted from the Grove:
The Post & Review is mostly newsletter this week, so we’ll start with the most important news … Piffin is back! She is not entirely recovered and slowly gains strength under the continuous watch of a doctor (her sister) and a nurse (her wife)

She’s back. This editor is thinking right now how nice it would be to have a tail so he could wag it, and a howl so he could sing to the moon about it. About his happiness and gratitude. It is enough just being able to report it

In order to spare Piffin the ordeal of having to relive her illness for everyone curious about it, the following brief history is provided. You’ll have to be satisfied with it: The illness began as an infection in her sinuses (not infrequent), went virulent, migrated to her brain. Her temperature spiked to 105°; she went Code Red once during her two week stay in ICU; a drain was inserted to evacuate residues of infection … we almost lost her

She is as hysterical in recovery as she is on dirty martinis. Prayers may be no more efficacious than simple love, but some believe otherwise. It’s good to have you back in any case. Welcome home, Piff

~

Layered on top of uncertainties (since resolved in our favor), and fears of loss (the goodbye in every hello), there is still room for misunderstanding and failed communication to make things worse. This editor has ready access to both these keys of failure, and managed to open the wrong door in last week’s Impromptu exercise

Greymane’s poem, Looming, reviewed last week, was tellingly honest in its depiction of loss and desolation, but he wanted his poem to be a statement of hope and belief instead. Grey reworked a poem from archives, replaced it, and notified this editor of the change and asked that the new edit be used for review. Grey’s Prewritten was recopied for review instead of the new Impromptu as instructed

Tho the replacement, Lost Again, was not a poem meant to be hopeful, or overlay a rainbow on the storm, it was unrelated to current concerns. His try for privacy failed however. Due to editorial misadventure, someone bleeding and vulnerable was revealed instead; someone suffering wounds for another, a desperate tapestry with threads of despair showing thru. Love will do that. Leave you vulnerable

Since Piffin’s return this week was a celebration and took up the whole of this week’s Word Game, there was no Impromptu. This provides convenient opportunity to set the record straight on Grey’s poem from last week. Again, apologies to Grey for getting it wrong

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If it seems that an inordinate number of apologies issue from this desk, this perception would not be wrong. Working from a cluttered desk (read: mind), if no one’s making mistakes then nothing’s getting done. So. This editor will continue making mistakes in a quest to get most of it right. He does ask to be notified so corrections can be made. He begs your understanding

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A reminder: Club mail is limited in length and may not encompass the week’s edition. Club mail has a spotty record, and spam filters are over-eager on occasion. If the Wordgrove Post & Review doesn’t show up in your mailbox and it matters to you, each week’s edition is available online at:
https://wordgrovepost.wordpress.com

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Prewritten for Thurs (06/19) @6pm PT/9 ET is: black sheep, spawn
In a strange twist, this week’s words seem nearly synonymous in connotation, making the challenge to separate their identities harder. Try anyway

~~

@Writers Platform
Glass Table: No new drops

~

Prewritten: a missed bus

Greymane: Missing the Bus
A life so rutted in routine that missing the bus is just another aggravation, getting up and doing it again; looking for love in the dark
Favorite line: ‘Home is where the heart resides … where my future hides, my destiny deferred’

~BarTalk: Silver: 100 Yard Dash

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Impromptu: dust, laughter, practice (06/05)

~Greymane: Lost Again
What is adventure but a sense of being lost among choices; and what is a full life but a series of adventures
Favorite Line: ‘Then she could practice going home and end up lost again’

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