Incendiary Lit

Here is the link to Esquire’s Summer Fiction Contest.

The titles are:

1. “Twenty-Ten”

2. “An Insurrection”

3. “Never, Ever Bring This Up Again”

SO WRITE!!!

It’s simple enough for anyone who’s familiar with the Firestarter Exercises. Titles is a good exercise because of its ambiguity. A while ago NPR issued a challenge to fiction writers to write a story that included the image of a wedding cake in the middle of the road. Richard Bausch’s Tandolfo the Great introduced me to the collection NPR put together. It’s a fun assignment to try to work to your own whims.

I, for some reason, thought that the “Page” function of wordpress was a magical place where posts could extend as long as they wanted and didn’t auto-delete the end of the post as you added more. Thus I’ve misplaced over a year’s worth of daily writing exercises on the world-wide-web of yesterday. I know there’re things like webarchive’s “way back machine” (which only applies to sites pre-2006) but have as of yet not been able to figure out how to retrieve those long-deleted exercises. Ho-hum. Add another tally to the “I’m retarded” list.

Bright news, however, is that I’m working on a book of Firestarters. I can’t say anything like “Its being published by ____” because at the moment, the publisher is likely to be Incendiary Lit Press with its first perfect bound book. That doesn’t mean that once it’s together I won’t spend $100 in postage and paper sending out queries, but it’s in the works, and if it’s not done yet, anyone who emails me (in order to avoid too much more spam, it’s simply the site name at gmail.com) in May will get a free ILP version of the Firestarter Book when its finally finished. I’m really hopeful though. Making good progress.

Or, at least mostly daily. They’re at the Firestarter Exercise page, also linked on the right of your screen. There are hundreds of back exercises to browse through and choose from if you’re ever needing a little spark to start your writing day off. Also, for exercises before 2008 (of which there are also hundreds) or that are attached to specific pieces of literature, browse through the category Exercises, again, on the right side of the screen. They’re fun, and a good way to get the (e)ink flowing. Today’s Firestarter was a little somber for the occasion:

9/11/08- A moment of Zen.

Yes, that number has rolled around again. So for today the writing exercise is to describe an odd scene in a poetic vignette. Something that is oddly peaceful. A sparrow twittering about a nest, then sitting still on a tree branch beside it. Sitting in a parking lot late at night that is playing a mellow John Williams-esque soundtrack. Whatever feels calming to you, but try to make it visual, and unique.

That’s right, still updating the Firestarter exercises… check it out here to see today’s and past exercises, or here it is as well:

5/14/08- Frame Tale madness!

Write a piece of short fiction which is like a babushka . A story about telling a story which involves telling a story. Whether you want to use formatting devices to separate the tales (italics, indentations, right justified, center justified, parenthesis, brackets, whatever) it’s up to you, but have at least 4 little anecdotes attempted… a fun idea might be to start a story and get interrupted. Enjoy!

Yes, I’ve come up with a new method of posting the exercises, so hopefully it works, but yes. Here’s the Firestarter exercise for today, and yeah, not sure why I posted two prose/flash fic exercises today… guess it’s just one of those moods. If you haven’t yet, check out Capp Steet Incident for inspiration for the exercises, and check out this week, and the last 5 months worth of Firestarter exercises to browse for one that really strikes you: here.

5/13/08 - Flash Fiction Fun!

Your character’s name is your middle name. Place that character in a situation you’ve been in recently where something could have gone horribly wrong, and have the horribly wrong situation pan out. As the story closes (at under 1000 words) have the character imagine what it would’ve been like if the horrible (traumatic, whatever) thing didn’t happen. Think of something mundane you did soon after that near miss, and have your character imagine, longingly for that mundane thing. Have fun throwing your character to the sharks.

I know a lot of people had gotten used to the Firestarter challenges being posted everyday in the main posts, but they are still being updated every day over there in the column on the right (and also right here). Everything from formal exercises, word lists, scenarios, exercises inspired by poems. There’s over 200 exercises right there for you in that one page. So check it out. Try them out. Hopefully we’ll be able to renew the Firestarter Challenge, if we can get anyone interested in a one month contest maybe…

Yep, the Contemporary Verse 2 2-day poem contest is here, and it’s half over. The ten words are Vessel, filament, proof, article, thorax, wrench, buckle, sienna, rattle, and nervous. The real wrench in the gears is thorax. Filament is a cool word, and easy to use because it sounds so cool. They have a clock on the guidelines site here.
So far, I’ve written 3 different versions. A sestina, a double abecedarian, and a white space happy free verse poem. All with different narratives (the 2xABCDian is loosely a narrative).

I planned on writing a more standard for me “kind of quirky and ironic free verse” poem, and maybe try something even more crazy, like a paradelle. That would be pretty sweet, but I make no promises.

After the contest is closed, I hope to post some participant’s alternate poems as well as my own in a little permanent link page by the Firestarter Challenges. You know the address: zebulonhuset (a - t) gmail (dot) com.

The ground is soaked with gasoline folks, get those ideas sparkin! Firestarter exercises will now be located in the Firestarter Exercises page (ironically enough) that is linked up on the top right side of the page. Also linked here. They will no longer be on the main page’s posts, so don’t forget about it! This week’s exercises are: Form, Title, Imagery, and Arbitrary Rules. Have fun!

The current setup unfortunately isn’t working, as it pushes the normal posts off the page too quickly, so we’re working on a calendar type of dealie or thingamajig that can be on the right whatchamacallit, ya know, the do-hickey, the right side table. Anyway, until that comes up we’ll have some intermittent exercises posted, and we’ll get an index of different exercises used on the Firestarter Challenge Page (again, right side table) so if you’re ever bored you can pick through them and find something to try. Also helps getting started on poems if you need one for class the next morning and just can’t think of anything. So yeah. Here’s a couple random exercises:

Write a flash fiction in a room entirely shades of one color.

Write a poem about your favorite folk tale, perhaps from a radically different perspective.

Write ten similes for death involving either animals or bugs.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: Glare on a stainless steel counter.
2. Form: Write an abecedarian. An Abecedarian is a 26 lined poem where the first letter of each line is the next letter in the alphabet. ie- As the / bee drinks / cans of / Dramamine he / even / forgets to / gather / honey from / inside the comb… etc. Get it?
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “Besides the” to begin at least 8 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: effigy/lethargy and confided/lopsided.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Antarctica is 10% of the world’s land mass, and has no indigenous population.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: Mingling smells of cinnamon and lemon.
2. Form: Write a trilogy of triolets. Here’s how to write a triolet
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “Who” to begin at least 10 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: flotsam/blossom and sooner/lunar.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: 95% of a desert tortoise’s life is spent in underground burrows.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: Staples on a telephone pole (from flyers).
2. Form: Write a sequence of 10 American Sentences. (A haiku without line breaks. Here’s how to write an American Sentence.
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “Engaged by” to begin at least 6 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: pocket/toxic and cigs/twigs.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: The Virginia Opossum has a gestation period (pregnancy) of only 12-13 days.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: An old fashioned black and white TV.
2. Form: Write a Rondeau. Here’s how to write a Rondeau.
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “Lost with” to begin at least 8 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Reeboks/knocks and roils/coils.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: The human eye blinks 4,200,000 times a year.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: A dot of blood coming up from a pinprick.
2. Form: Write a Haiku Sequence using a different color theme in each haiku.
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “We (insert verb)” to begin at least 5 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Courts/Quartz and pill/trill.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Brittle, countless and majestic are all Shakespearean neologisms (words Shakespeare made up, or at least hadn’t appeared in writing before. We’ll get into the authorship debate another time). Here is a link of a bunch more. Use the fact of his invention of a word or two from the list in your poem.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: A tarnished silver spoon.
2. Form: Write a Rhaptzung. Here’s how to write a rhaptzung. Give it a shot… I bet you Dylan Thomas would’ve at least tried to write one.
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “And” to begin at least 6 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Bliss/fist (with a wrist in there somewhere) and weens/jeans.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Lorne Greene has only one nipple. The other was bitten off by an alligator during filming of Wild Kingdom.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: To pieces

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Image: An old fashioned alarm clock.
2. Form: Write the first sonnet for a crown (a sequence that follow a similar theme). If you don’t know how to write an English Sonnet, go here, it’s the second set of bolded letters, the first is very helpful too, explaining a Petrarchan Sonnet)
3. Anaphora: Use the phrase “It’s not” to begin at least 4 lines.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Go Slant! Tremulous/rust and pert/worth.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Gerbils can be born pregnant.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: Truncated

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “There is a fork in the branch” from The Perch by Galway Kinnell.
2. Syllabics: Write tercets with syllable counts alternating between : 6-6-10 and 4-4-8.
3. Color: Spring Green.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: June/strewn and turbulent/firmament.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Every year people in the US suffer 1 billion colds (cough, sore throat etc, not brr, it’s cold).

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: Truncated

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “He asked to be resurrected as a dolphin” from The Goldfish by David Hernandez from his Crab Orchard Award Series winning Always Danger. Red terror-level-highly recommended, especially with 4 copies at amazon for under $7.50.
2. Syllabics: Write 2 eight lined stanzas with syllable counts at: 4-4-6-4-8-6-2 and 4-4-6-4-8-8-2.
3. Color: Taupe.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: ire/wire (throw in another ire somewhere in one of the lines too), awe/Arkansas and tenuous/mellifluous.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: Every two seconds someone in the US needs blood.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: Truncated

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “Although it is a cold evening” from At the Fishhouses by Elizabeth Bishop.
2. Syllabics: Write couplet stanzas of 10 and 6 syllables.
3. Color: Olive.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: engorge/forge, coddle/bottle.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: JB Dunlop was the first person to put air into tires.

Firestarter Challenge Week 9 Title: Truncated

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. First Line: (take a line from a famous poet and use that to jumpstart your poem. “She is scooped out and bow-like” from Stonepicker by Frieda Hughes.
2. Syllabics: Write quatrains of 6, 6, 6, and 8 syllables.
3. Color: Peach.
4. Rhyme: Use the following rhymes somewhere in your piece: Epiphany/infamy, taught/watt.
5. Fact: Use a scientific fact in your piece: The North Atlantic gets one inch wider every year.