Incendiary Lit

Firestarter Challenge Week 5 Title: Frayed Ends

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Color: Dusty Red.
2. Imagery: A man standing by a streetlight with his head bowed.
3. Vegetable: Write a piece utilizing, even in a small way, the vegetable Kale. (Definitely check out the link to learn something about Kale before you start. I learned some interesting stuff about it from the page I linked to.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a piece, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Japanese Biker Fails to Notice Missing Leg.
5. Time of Year: January 2nd.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 5 Title: Frayed Ends

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Color: Copper.
2. Imagery: Swirling prism in an oily puddle of water.
3. Vegetable: Write a piece utilizing, even in a small way, the vegetable Water Chestnut.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a piece, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Helicopters sent to save trapped Greeks.
5. Time of Year: Halloween.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 5 Title: Frayed Ends

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Color: Ash.
2. Imagery: The warmth of the sun.
3. Vegetable: Write a piece utilizing, even in a small way, the vegetable Rutabaga.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a piece, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is UK OK’s contentious stem cell research. The part of this article I thought was especially interesting was the fear of transferance of animal dna for human/cow clones.
5. Time of Year: April Fool’s Day.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 5 Title: Frayed Ends

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly), and I know it’s a new month but still the old title, but that’s just going to happen once in awhile.

1. Color: Chartreuse.
2. Imagery: Smell of rotting wood.
3. Vegetable: Snow peas.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Texas startup says it has batteries beat.
5. Time of Year: Valentine’s Day.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly), and I know it’s a new month but still the old title, but that’s just going to happen once in awhile.

1. Event: A blue moon.
2. Imagery: Smell of fresh mown grass.
3. Music: Use “and” anaphora at least five times, in syllabic verse (8 syllables per line if you can’t decide on a number).
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Planet Formation Mystery Solved.
5. Time of Year: New Year’s Eve.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly), and I know it’s a new month but still the old title, but that’s just going to happen once in awhile.

1. Event: An extended family meal.
2. Imagery: Smell of cinnamon.
3. Music: Write syllabic quatrains with 5,5,4,5 syllable counts, and an ABAB rhyme scheme.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is One snake for two people in Indian village.
5. Time of Year: Christmas Morning.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Visiting a national memorial.
2. Imagery: A brown spot of grass.
3. Music: The first word of every line must contain an \I\ sound. For example: Pine trees/lined with the/light on the moon.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Spanish Thief Saw Himself as Robin Hood-like Bandit.
5. Time of Year: The last week of November.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: The last time seeing someone close to you (whether you knew it’d be the last time or not).
2. Imagery: A tree without any leaves.
3. Music: \A\. Use may hard A sounds, like in the line “James gave a grave gaze to the disdain displayed on their faces.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Dolphin Species Goes Extinct Due to Humans.
5. Time of Year: April Fool’s Day.
   

The Firestarter Challenge has almost wrapped up its first contest, and there’ve still only been a few entries. Here are the rules. Take a swing at that free $25 and submit one of the exercises you’ve written. Short stories (up to 1500 words) or poetry are both acceptable, the only requirements are that you use at least one exercise utilizing the title of the week from when that exercise was assigned. This week its Not Quite Half-Empty, send your submissions to zebulonhuset@gmail.com and win fame and fortune… hey, in some places $25 is considered a small fortune.

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A graduation.
2. Imagery: A red rose lying on snow.
3. Music: Be aware of consonance in your poem. Consciously repeat similar consonant sounds as often as possible.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is “Rocky” statue erected in Serbian village.
5. Time of Year: First snow.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Stuck in traffic.
2. Imagery: Graffiti on a freeway overpass.
3. Music: Write a poem varying between four syllables and six syllables per line with end rhyme.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is Dinosaur Mass Grave Discovered in Switzerland.
5. Time of Year: Leap Day.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 4 Title: Not Quite Half-Empty

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A wedding.
2. Imagery: A very melted candle.
3. Music: Use a tetrameter rhythm, and some sort of end-rhyme scheme. This is tetrameter rhythm.
4. News Story: Use this story as a springboard for a poem, be it first person from someone in the news story, reading the story, hearing about the story from an eye witness, whatever. Today’s story is High Diving Mules Cause Controversy.
5. Time of Year: Late fall.
   

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Armageddon.
2. Imagery: A burning palm tree.
3. Music: Assonance assonance assonance. That’s right extra-extra-assonance.
4. Sensory Conflict: A sweet taste and foul smell.
5. Theme: Sh*t Happens.

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Car accident.
2. Imagery: Smell of gasoline.
3. Music: Rhyme caesura words in rhyming couplets, but have the caesura rhyme be a different sound from the end rhyme.
4. Sensory Conflict: Loud sound from very small thing.
5. Theme: When God gives you lemons…

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Floating on the ocean at dawn.
2. Imagery: Vertical blinds missing one slat.
3. Music: Rhyme instead of end words, caesura words (words in the middle of the line) ie: I can float on the ocean/in a boat of deficiencies.
4. Sensory Conflict: A sweet taste and physical pain.
5. Theme: Predestination.

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Grocery shopping.
2. Imagery: White towel on bathroom floor.
3. Music: Iambic lines. To learn more about how to write iambic lines, and not just counting syllables, pay close attention to keeping the iambs going perfectly.
4. Sensory Conflict: A foul stench and a beautiful sight.
5. Theme: Random Chance.

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Being woken up in the middle of the night.
2. Imagery: a broken pool cue lying on a pool table.
3. Music: Use alliteration between every end word and ever first word of a line ie: lacks/lovely...
4. Sensory Conflict: A high pitched, petite sounding voice from a large woman/man.
5. Theme: Random Chance.

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: A birth.
2. Imagery: A pile of dead leaves.
3. Music: Use anaphora four times in the beginning, and then four more times at the end of a poem. Here is how to use anaphora.
4. Sensory Conflict: A taste and temperature that don’t normally go together: cold chicken noodle soup, hot Coke.
5. Theme: Don’t worry, be happy.

Firestarter Challenge Week 3 Title: Off-White

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Event: Fistfight.
2. Imagery: A silhouette.
3. Music: Use assonance in each line.
4. Sensory Conflict: A smell that is very out of place with a texture, for example, fresh baked cinnamon rolls and very rough stucco, together when you were running to see what your mother was baking, then tripped and scraped your face on the house’s wall.
5. Theme: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Firestarter Challenge Week 2 Title: Thursday, 3am

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Color: Mauve.
2. Imagery: Taste of apple pie ala mode.
3. Form- Basic: Abecedarian. Here’s how to write an abecedarian, but basically, it’s a 26 lined poem, the first line’s first letter is A, second line’s second letter is B and so on.
4. Form- Complex: Write a Double Abecedarian, and not just two abecedarians in a row, but as the first letters go down the alphabet, the last letters of the line are climbing it, so the last letter of the first line is Z last letter of the second line is Y etc. An example is Julie Larios’ poem “Double Abecedarian: Please Give Me” which was featured in Best American Poetry 2006 edited by the wonderful Billy Collins.
5. Theme: Love lost.