This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.
Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore... We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.
Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.
This month I have provided the prompts. Special thanks to Elephant's Child for hosting me for the first two weeks of May prompts.
This week's prompts are:
Battery
Remain
Age
Bite
Produce
Workshop
Forest
Critic
Use some or all of the prompts.
Good luck all!
Thank you for the words this month. I'll have a story worked out on my blog by Friday
ReplyDeleteI look forward to it, River!
DeleteXO
WWW
My battery is running on empty. Age and disability will do that. Just the same, as I look around the world I am distressed and disturbed by the ever growing forest of injustice. Injustices perpetrated and reinforced against the people who have least.
ReplyDeleteI remain committed to social justice and will continue to be a vicious critic of policies that talk about the ‘trickle down effect’. They produce more inequality not less. Naïve it may be, but I would love to see rather a lot of world leaders (most of them if the truth be told) signed up for compulsory empathy workshops.
In the interim I will continue to speak out. And act when I can. I sincerely hope that my bite is MUCH worse than my bark.
Well done, EC, powerful message and one in which more "leaders" paid more attention.
DeleteXO
WWW
Perhaps we all need to start biting instead of just barking. Good use of the prompts E.C.
DeleteYes let's learn how to bite!
DeleteYou preach to the choir, so to speak.
DeleteAnd i meant that in a good way, i was talking about among us.
DeleteBite, baby, bite! ;-)
DeleteThere's only one thought that the word REMAIN will ever mean for me; remaining in the European Union. As the campaign for the referendum on Brexit raged, those of us who wanted to stay in the EU were branded - yes, branded; we were called REMAINIACS.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I know this isn't a story but it touched a nerve!
I have never heard the term "remainiacs" Anne, how appalling. How others of different opinion love to label in the most abhorrent terms. Yours IS a story.
DeleteXO
WWW
Thankyou Mary. xx
DeleteAnne Brew: I remember cringing when I heard the term Remainiacs and thinking that I would definitely be one. WWW is right - this definitely is a story.
DeleteWow. I'm a remainiac too!
DeleteIt is your story and i am glad you are telling it.
DeleteThe "Brexit" was a good example of how wrong a majority can be and how much damage it can do.
DeleteThanks everyone for those kind comments.
Deletebest wishes for Delores .
ReplyDeletei always enjoy how you blogger friends try to provoke fellows to write :) hugs and blessings
Here's mine:
ReplyDelete-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A day’s hike seemed like a great idea at the time but now they were lost in the forest. Emma thought to seize this opportunity to discuss everything, and she reinforced to herself *every single effing thing*, with Owen.
The workshop on emotional intelligence had given her many pointers. But it was impossible to pin Owen down. He was one of those hyperactive men, bouncing from one thing to another.
He was off in the distance, fighting with his equipment, his compass, his back pack, his thermos and his hat. She sat down on a nearby log and rummaged in her own back pack to produce sandwiches out of its depths. She unwrapped hers slowly and took a bite, watching him as he jumped in the air with his cellphone in an attempt to get service she supposed. She no longer cared. “It must be the bloody battery!” he yelled across to her.
Weren’t they each at the age where life could be taken a little more gently, she mused.
She held his sandwich up and gestured for him to come over. She reminded herself not to be critical, to remain calm. He looked so cross as he meandered over, cursing his cellphone, the now useless GPS, the stupid compass and “to top it all off,” he said now, “my hiking boots have shrunk.”
She finished off her sandwich and thought, what’s the point of a discussion. She looked up at him. He was refusing to sit down, complaining as to why couldn’t she remember he didn’t like ham.
She cut to the chase.
“I want a divorce,” she said calmly, folding up her sandwich wrapper carefully and stowing it in her backpack.
As he laughed at her, telling her how stupid she was and was she joking, she looked around her carefully. Scattered about were some heavy branches which had fallen off trees. A recent storm. He was wandering off again, cellphone in the air, his empty sandwich wrapper thrown carelessly on the ground.
One good whack, she thought, on the back of his head. It would look like an accident, a branch falling off a tree and hitting him.
She could spend hours looking for help. And when she found it she could work up some tears and panic in ten seconds flat.
She got to her feet slowly and about six feet away she spotted the perfect branch.
Ha, ha, ha, ha. Great use of the prompts. Guess we know "the rest of the story."
DeleteWisewebwoman: I should feel sorry for Owen. I don't. Listen. Just listen. And now Emma will get her freedom.
DeleteArgh. Why are peole that insensitive to one another? Good use of the words.
DeleteWhile i understand her urge, i hope she resists and actually simply goes through with a divorce. Less guilt and remorse in the long run.
DeleteWhy reading Patricia Highsmith or Roald Dahl, when you can read webwisewoman? ;-)
DeleteI'm a big fan of both Sean. I love the darkness :)
DeleteXO
WWW
I am not surprised, www. ;-)
DeleteAs I am just reading it, may I commend Claire Keegan's Small things like these?
Love her Sean, and I have read this one. Saw her in Toronto at UofT for a read.
DeleteXO
WWW
This is very excellent, I like it so much. Go Emma!
DeleteWisewebwoman: I don't want to say Owen deserves a hit on the head but he probably does. Great use of the prompts.
DeleteHave a lovely day.
Good prompts this month. My story is on my blog and it is here too:
ReplyDeleteNOT SO NEIGHBORLY by Granny Annie
Louise was always the critic. She was a nosy neighbor especially when it came to my creations. We had a big age difference and Louise, the busybody, believed it was her job to correct me on everything. She would hang over the back fence and give a review my entire life.
It was my day in the workshop. First I had to take a trip to the forest in order to find just what I needed to produce my invention. Every bug that could took a bite out of me that day. Still I was able to remain in the woods until I found what I needed.
I laughingly carried the bundle of limbs, sticks, leaves and moss back to the shop. Louise viewed me with a questioning eye and made many derogatory comments. I simply smiled and went inside to get to work hammering, sawing, and spraying.Once my creation was almost complete, I inserted a battery and carried the large art piece outside.
It was a perfect image of Big Foot but wore a sign that said "Louise" and had a little electronic voice box that repeated over and over, "I am a nosy neighbor. I am a nosy neighbor." Suddenly Louise disappeared behind the hedge.
Granny Annie: Grinning here. Well done Louise...
DeleteVery clever Granny Annie, I like this use of the prompts!
DeleteXO
WWW
Hehe,I hope Louise learned a lesson here, well done.
DeleteHeeheehee! Excellent.
DeleteEchoing Mimi.
DeleteAt least I tried: Words for Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteWell done Charlotte!
DeleteXO
WWW
Thank you for providing the words this month, and i'm sorry i am late, it's been a rough couple of days.
ReplyDeleteMy words are over here.
Loved your take on the words Mimi.
DeleteXO
WWW
Fritz Weigle alias F.W. Bernstein once noted: "Die größten Kritiker der Elche waren früher selber welche." / The greatest critics of the elks in former times were elks themselves.
ReplyDeleteWho am I then to criticise the age of bits and bites? I could otherwise not "produce" this comment, could I? Moreover, as long as my battery's not completely empty, I shall be able like Sean McGahern and Sebastião Salgado to support foresting.
Anyone able to explain, why I do not like the word "workshop"?
Workshop, as in a small area where someone has tools and equipment and does various work is a marvelous place to get away and do what you love.
DeleteWorkshop, as in a conference where they are going to bore you to death trying to teach you things you already know, is not so marvelous.
Mimi, you are marvellous!
DeleteLove messymimi's comment - and your take on the prompts.;
DeleteSuccessful workshops on the other hand can be learning opportunities, perfecting crafts like writing and fabric/yarn endeavors. I keep thinking of that men's group called Elks, is that what you meant?
DeleteAh, www, nothing against what's being offered; I just don't like the word. As for your question: No. Even did not know that such a group exists, but just thankfully took the chance to quote one of my favourite satirists. ;-)
DeleteThere wasn’t a battery strong enough to jolt Martha from her chair and out into her workshop. Over the years, age had taken a big bite from her youth and left her as drooped as wilted lettuce in a garden. Critics would award ribbons to the garden that mysteriously remained lovely year after year. Martha smirked as the fellow gardeners gave her the evil eye.
ReplyDeleteThey have no idea about the evil eye. I could mow them over.
Susan Kane: I really like this and sadly understand the wilted lettuce analogy only too well.
Delete"age had taken a big bite from her youth and left her as drooped as wilted lettuce" Susan what a fabulous line! I love your take on these prompts!
ReplyDeleteXO
WWW
Here's my take on the prompt: Fiction: St. Felicity's Newest Arrival 2 & 3. Just a couple of weeks later...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the words. They are quite useful even if I didn't use all of them.
Have a lovely day.