The Iron Writer Challenge #79 Dellani Oakes

And here we are again. Another week, and another TIW challenge. This time, it’s C79, christened the Dellani Oakes Challenge, since it was she who supplied the four elements for this challenge rather than Brian, who supplies the elements usually.

(Oh yes, the Mathew Weaver Challenge is coming soon, too. Stay tuned!)

The back story for this one… I wanted in on the Autumn Open, the second quarterly tournament for the year. Since Jordan scraped ahead of me in C77, I had to win in some other challenge before the tournament (which happens to be on the 25^th of September, in case you wanted to know).

My dilemma: all challenges till then were filled, and the only empty slots available were the ones after the Autumn Tournament. Just as I was about to give up hope, I asked DL Zwissler if she would switch with me for one of her challenges, since she had already been in a few others

Thankfully, she graciously let me step in for her for C79, and so here I am. The elements, as we were given them:

                                    Genetically Enhanced Garden Gnomes

                                                          Camelot

                                                 Halitosis (bad breath)

                                             Stratego (the board game)

On Digging Pits and Falling Into Them

I’ve written about my elder sister more than a couple of times here. When she found out about my blog last week, she asked me to call her Serena, rather than SH, whenever I mention her. Mathew and Serena? (Shrug) Personally, I preferred SH. You know, it’s kind of like I’m shushing her when I talk about her, and that was kind of nice. But well, with progress must come change... sigh.

That done, I guess it’s about time I introduce the brat… ahem, I mean, the other sister. The kid.

For the sake of easy reading, I’m going to call her Zoola. It’s a variation of the nickname Serena came up with way back in the day, and it’s one that would drive her (Zoola) up the wall when she finally gets around to reading this (if ever).

She’s 14, and though she isn’t showing all that much interest in writing, unlike Serena and I, she does have other artistic talents that I don’t. Maybe it’s just that she hasn’t found her voice yet.

Zoola can be sweet when she wants something from you, and a mule when she doesn’t. Your basic kid sister. She’s the youngest, but our parents never let her get spoiled. Close one, that. Growing up with a younger sister isn’t easy. At least with a brother, you can do this... 

... every now and again when authority needs to be established. Not so with sisters. It is so much more complicated with sisters.

The reason for this post, though, is ( obviously) what happened a few weeks ago.

When Thoughts Go Wild and All Comes Out

 Disclaimer: The following blog post contains words and ideas not planned too far ahead before being written down and hastily edited. As such, undiluted rambling and distinctive lack of a fixed topic may be experienced.

Reader discretion is advised.

So you decided to brave it anyway. Thanks, I guess. Your belief in me is my inspiration and all that. Here we go.

Believe it or not, it isn’t always that I start writing with a fixed point in mind when it comes to my blog posts.

Sure, the last few ones found me lucky enough to actually have some sort of a point to stick to. Dragons, the latest form of head banging, roaches… there was a point, and I (more or less, admittedly) stuck to it.

Here, though, not so much. Nope, not a single idea on what I want to write about, and I sit with my hands moving and my fingers dancing and I see these words type themselves onto this page, the keys being pressed repeatedly at a good enough rate to ensure steady rhythm and a smooth flow of words.

The strangest thing about that smooth flow is that I have no idea what I’m about to write next. These words pouring out of me, they are instantaneous and as such have no more than a few fifteen seconds worth of planning before them. With little and no knowledge of what’s in store for both you and me at this point, here’s to buckling up and adjusting scuba masks before delving into the depths of my gibberish.

Here we go.

Research: Ravenous Roaches

It was a research post that I planned on doing today, and it was research post that I am going to do. It’s so nice when you have a set goal and objective in mind, isn’t it?

Well, that cozy feeling didn’t last so long for me. Simple reason, I couldn’t decide on the darn topic for this research post of mine. I did one on dragons last time, and one on crossbows months before that. What could I possibly do this time?

Swords? Not in the mood for sorting through medieval stuff. Spiders? Yeah… maybe later. Definitely later. The Flying Dutchman? That’s coming pretty soon, not just now, though. Stay tuned.

But for this one, I had not a clue what I wanted to do it on.. Then, my muse tossed in its bed pulled the cover up to its chin. Before it drifted off again, it murmured:

"Darned *mumble mumble* roaches... *mumble*"

The light bulb finally lit.

Mu-hue hue hue...

And so, the roach it is.

The Iron Writer Challenge #77 (Grudge #9)

The best part about being an Iron Writer is that most of us in the group who communicate regularly on the Facebook page have this sort of bond of kinship. I know, it does sound strange like that, but hear me out.

Most of us have never met the others in person (me not any, obviously), and we’re from the far flung corners of the earth. Brian Rogers, founder of the group, explicitly made it a rule that there was to be no self-promoting on the page. So, probably or want of something to do, the early Irons started bantering among themselves.

Friendships bloomed, alliances were formed, and rivalries were discovered… and out of those rivalries, the Grudge Match was born.

Basically, it’s a glorified weekly challenge where one Iron trash talked another till the gauntlet gets thrown. And this week, I am in one.

The Day The Anvil Struck the Hammer

It’s been over two years since I started the accounting course that I am in the final stage of right now. Eighteen months into it, I had to start taking classes in the Big City, which is, as you’d know if you’d seen a few of my earlier posts, a few hours away from home sweet home. As I said, I’m in my last stage here, and if all goes well, I’ll be done by the end of this year.

That’s not what this post is about, no. This one has much to do with the busses I take on my weekly commutes. And there have been plenty of those, let me tell you.

You see, whether or not it’s the same route you take every week, every ride has its differences. Sometimes it could be a good trip, and other times, it could be downright awful. But knowing me, you would probably be realizing now that the third option, i.e. ‘most’ times, are, to me, just funny.

 Every bus ride I take to the City has its special moment, and I don’t mean just the ones like these:

...which are hilarious enough in real life, especially when they happen to you (speaking from painful experience, yes). My moments of note include weirder things that have happened, like the time we were attacked by a cloud of grasshoppers, and oh yes, the never to be forgotten Day The Shoe Held Us Hostage.

Of Efforts and Betrayals

There comes the time in the life of a man where he stands before that bathroom mirror and looks at himself.

He examines the face in front of him. He studies what he sees, peers into the reflection, into the image that peers back out at him.

Then he reaches for the shaving cream, grabs the razor, and it begins.

Mythological Research: Devastating Dragons

It’s been a while since my last research post; I wanted to make those kind of posts a regular thing. But stuff happened, and long story short, I wasn’t able to. Well, this is me trying to amend for that, and I’m doing it explosively.

You read the title, and yup, that's right. This one is all about the big, the bad, and the awesome… dragons.

BOO

Smaug is all the rage these days, and you can’t argue his popularity. He’s big, he’s bad, he single claw-dedly (fang-dedly?) drove out every dwarf from their home in the mountain Erebor, and made their pile of gold his personal couch. What’s not to like?

The Hobbit was written almost 80 years ago, and Smaug certainly wasn’t by the last dragon to be written about since then… but neither was it the first. Dragon lore has existed since pretty much ancient times, and out of curiosity and boredom, I went off and researched what I could find online.

When Friends Fall and Ideals Change

Nothing can start a literary piece of art better than sitting down (or in my case, arranging pillows, stretching legs out, adjusting laptop and cracking knuckles, not necessarily in that order) to beginning to write.

And something else that’s more or less equal to that in the same aspect is the occasion when you have something specific in mind you want to write about.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those rare times, in my case at least.

Today, I talk to you about… how my first ever job interview went.

On Nerves and Novices

Normally, I’d do a little ramble here and there, talk about some vague topic that somehow skews into whatever point that I’m about to try and make that particular day.

Yes, you don’t have to shout, I am aware that ‘try’ happens to be the keyword in above sentence.

Anyway, that’s how I’d normally go about it, if you’ve ever read my previous natterings. This time… well, this time I’m cutting right to the chase.

I’m having an interview tomorrow. There, I said it. 

Of Fireworks and Nostalgic Groans

I was enthusiastic, I was eager to start, and it was in a bout of adrenaline and probably a little more than just a bit of madness that I texted N and asked him how I would go about starting a blog.

It was that, and the internet just happened to be on right then, too. Facebook was boring, no one was on chat, and I couldn’t think of anything to watch on YouTube.

Basically, I had nothing else to do.

N replied, “Try Blogspot.”

I shrugged, “Why not?”

I clicked the mouse, typed, hit enter, and sat back as the tiny circle spun.

I sniffed, and clicked on the blue link: “create an account.”

I scratched my head, shrugged, tapped a beat on the table. This bit I hadn’t thought through.

I made my decision, roughly half a minute later. I leaned over and typed, “M… A… T…”

 Six months and two weeks later, and here I am.

The Iron Writer Challenge #73 Summer Tournament Final

You know me as an author. Mostly comical, sometimes serious, but always… an author.

I don’t dabble much in poetry for a few reasons. One, I have this strange feeling that poems should, somehow, someway, rhyme. I have no idea why I sometimes see a jumble of words that don’t rhyme being referred to as ‘poetry'. Just correct me if I’m wrong, thanks.

And the second reason… I’m no poet, fair and simple. Thank you very much.

Why bring poetry in all of a sudden? I’m getting there.

Thanks to the unexpected win I pulled over the heads of fellow Irons Dani J Caile, Jordan Bell and Suzann Smith in The Iron Writer Summer Tournament Preliminary, I was pulled into the Final. Ergo, I was given yet another Challenge to do, one that I never asked for. Sigh.

As always, the elements were four… but this time, it seemed a bit too easy. Judge for yourselves. They were:

A lost key

A travel brochure

A thermostat

Dessert topping

  

To Throw A Slacker on a Deadline

I’m a really lazy dude.

I’ve never tried hiding it. I talk about it all the time. I write blog posts on my laziness. You ask me, and I’ll tell you up straight; yes, I’m lazy.

What’s with the up-front honesty, you ask? I’ll tell you. It isn’t about being honest. Rather, it’s just a bit of me adhering to my principles.

See, I could protest otherwise. I could say, “No, I’m one of the most hardworking people you have ever met, blahdey blahdey blah.” The thing is, then I would require proof of my hard work, which would be more hard work in itself to find, (because there probably isn’t much. I’m too lazy to check)

I’d also have to protest and argue my point, and, well, it’s all really a load of unnecessary work. So, in the interests of being lazy… the right thing to do would be to admit it and get back to doing nothing.

So this is me, cutting to the chase. Hello, I’m lazy.

The Iron Writer Challenge #72

With a great amount of luck, I somehow pulled through and managed to win the preliminary round on the Iron Writer tournament. (this was my story…)

All you guys who voted for me, thank you ever so much. The popular vote helped save me back there, and I owe it all to you.

You would think I’d be happy on this victory. At first, oh yeah. Ego stoked and everything. But then, along came the news that I had qualified to the next and final round… and that would be against the other three winners of the same preliminary.

So, the prize for winning… was another challenge. Oh, great. The good news was that this second round would be held two weeks after the round I just completed; which gave me a week off while another unrelated challenge took place.

see?

Then came the call… and I remembered that I had signed up for that middle challenge, too.

The Iron Writer Challenge #71

  

When I said I was feeling lazy, I didn’t expect to take an almost two week break from posting. But somehow, that’s exactly what happened.

I just wasn’t in the mood to write, and so I didn’t.

  

But I had to come back to this thing eventually; and so here I am, vacation sadly over. Sigh.

And once again, on the Iron Writer.

Thanks to my first ever story, the one I managed to win, I apparently got into the quarterly tournament. It's big deal here, since it happens only once in every three months. You know how in the regular weekly tournament, there are just four writers with the four elements? Well, in this, there are sixteen writers with the same set of elements.

Of Swings and Solutions

You would probably recall that I talk about how I try to post within my three day cycle; keeping a regular schedule shouldn’t be a problem, because ideas are not hard to come by for me, and I also happened to have a list of topics ready to choose from.

Strangely enough, with all those fancy rules of mine, you would also notice the delays between my posts of late. Odd for me to call attention to it myself, I know… but I’m blowing the whistle. Yes, on myself.

Three day cycles turning into four, and five… I haven’t been up to my usual standard, obviously. And this worries me, because I have the annoying tendency to not be able to stick to things for very long before getting tired of them.

I managed to get bored of movies and serials for about a month. True story. This happened to be the same month in which I did not have any new books to read, either. Needless to say, that was one awful time in my life. (shudder)

Back to the point…. I am slacking. I know exactly why I am. And worse, I know exactly what I can do to get over it.

Why am I not writing? Simple reason….

I don’t want to.

On The Parents of Progress

The saying goes that necessity is the mother of all invention. Sure, maybe. It certainly is probable enough, if you just take it in, nod, and then continue scrolling down Facebook (which is where you probably saw the quote, in meme format) like I do most of the time.

But if you gave it any amount of thought, you’d probably see that it can’t be all there is. There has got to be more to invention than simply necessity. Boredom? Tools and parts lying around? Wife mad at you and chased you out to the garage, with nothing else to do till morning?

To say that necessity alone is the source of invention would be like saying that the patty alone makes a good burger. Which, as you know quite well, it does not.

 

I rest my case

Then, you ask, what metaphorical element would the bun represent, supposing we continue with that metaphorical burger? (Ignore the condiments, they're the smaller stuff, like that night in the garage). Well, to be blunt, I believe that a big, very big, part of invention stems from…. wait for it….. laziness.

The Tale of The Cat and The Monkey - When TIWs Gather

And it happened again.

Ever since the shenanigans that Dani J Caile and I got up to on account of Neal’s goatee, I have instinctively been looking out for a time when Dani and I could do a similar bit of creative dueling once more. Apparently, he’s been looking out for the same thing, but neither of us seemed to find a convenient enough avenue to start it off.

Until the other day, when Dani decided to take matters into his own hands.

Everything worthwhile needs something good to kick it off; in this case, the kick off happened innocently enough. All I did was share a picture on my timeline. This one, to be exact.

A few hours later, I saw this. Innocent enough, you would say. Not to him, and not to me.

Of course, I did what you would expect me to have done. The gauntlet had been thrown. The time had come once more. So I drew my Sword of Creativity and plunged in. 

The Iron Writer Challenge #68

Since joining the Iron Writers, my newly blossoming career took a turn for the better in a way I had never fully expected.

Hanging out with those experienced writers is a truly amazing experience; having them talk and treat you like an equal, being able to ask them for advice, and poking at each other in our regular banter, each of them backing you and cheering you up when you feel down… I feel truly blessed to be a part of this group.

Of course, there was a catch to all that. I still had to take part in some of those beastly weekly challenges… and I remain as useless at flash fiction as a plumber at aeronautical engineering. But if I’m to stick around at The Iron Writer, sooner or later I will have to spar in another challenge, and another.  The only way I’m going to manage to survive… would be to (ugh) practice.

So, like the fool that I usually am, I signed up for another challenge, and a few more down the road as well. What was I thinking, you ask? I probably wasn’t thinking anything; if I was, I wouldn’t have done this to myself.

So here we are again, and its Challenge 68… my second Iron Writer bout. And this time, I was up against even more experienced adversaries.

An Arr-gument of Sorts

You all know that I’m in the middle (or, to be more accurate, near the beginning) of The Legend of Charzahn. I really need to pick up my pace, but that’s beside the point of today’s ramble.

As any writer should know, I’m taking pains to get my story done. The thinking, the writing, the eventual editing, then the scrapping of probably over half of my work, then the re-edits, and so on.

And that’s just one of my books. I have more in the back of my head. Way, waaaay more.

What do I hope to gain out of all this?

Well, a feeling of accomplishment, definitely. A modest degree of popularity, and recognition for my developing talents. Good friends who understand my efforts. And a rabid fan following screaming my name as I step out of the limousine would be nice, too. Hey, I’m just saying, I wouldn’t turn it down if I ever got offered it, alright?

Then there’s this:

No arguing with wanting that, is there?

And, well, let’s not beat around the bush. I also happen to want to make money.

Who doesn’t?

From Rhinos To Castles

One thing I can never stress enough is how darn lucky I am to have met each and every one of you. Having the chance to talk you amazing people, hearing what you have to say… it more than makes all the hard work worthwhile. I know that I deserve less than half of the praise you give me, but I appreciate it, all the same.

You have to know, though; if you think you like my work, then without a doubt, you’d be knocked over by what my sister can do.

I’ve taken the name Wordweaver as part of my pseudonym; I know what a lofty title that is, and it’s because that’s how good I eventually want to work myself up to be. But my elder sister, SH? If anyone deserved the title Wordweaver, she’s the one. She’s always had a way with words that I could never hope to match, and if she ever starts writing again, as I hope that she eventually will, you’ll be in be in for something special.

On Time And Time Again...

Recently, I realized that there was this one question I kept hearing every so often. Every other week or so, I would see this topic as a meme online, as a status on Facebook, or I’d overhear one of my friends mentioning it, or something.

And when I didn’t see it anywhere, it would cross my mind at odd moments during my regular contemplations. Yep, I contemplate a lot. Where else do you think my many ideas come from?

By now, I’m hoping you’re curious enough to wonder what in the world I’m rambling on about this time.

The question in question, my friend; if you ever somehow got the chance to go back in time, or relive a few years of your past… how much would you change?

Photo Credits : Robbert van der Steeg

Of Bells, Whistles And A Hammer

Suppose I asked you to list the top ten most annoying sounds that you are familiar with on a pretty much daily basis. In the optimistic chance that you actually follow through with that strange request…

The likelihood of the phrase ‘alarm in the morning’ or a suitable variation of that being included close to the top would probably be high.

If this was some article for a major network or research journal, or even something backed up by the slightest bit of evidence, this is the point where the numbers come in. I say, let’s just ignore the fact that the following numbers are totally made up and continue as if I have something really important to say that you probably should hear.

It has been scientifically proven (no, it hasn’t) that 95% of the female population and 45% of males in most countries set an alarm at night before they go to sleep. Further study has shown that of these people who indeed set alarms, 85% of them use their phones, smart or otherwise, to set up these alarms.

And of the cases where the alarm does indeed ring at the correct time (assuming that the battery hadn’t died during the night, that the user hadn’t gotten am and pm mixed up again or that the dog carried it off to the kitchen for the fifteenth time for no reason) roughly 83.378% of people who hear the alarm reach over and set it to snooze, probably imagining that they really are going to wake up in five minutes. (chuckle)

Ah, the snooze function. What would we do without it?

Down Lanes and Over Stiles

After all the tense nights of nocturnal studying (three of them, specifically the ones just prior to E-Day), the worry filled days of emotional breakdown (two, to be exact. E-Day itself, and the day before), and the hard work that went into preparation (no comment on that line), you would think that now, on this side of the Dreaded Day of The Exam (that's the E-Day you were scratching your head about), I would have some free time to myself.

Give me a second to catch my breath while you go along and re-read that to see if it makes sense.

See, bottom line, I deserved a break. Oh yes, I did. The tension, the panic, the three hour and twenty minute torture of sitting in once place and writing on the same subject without pause… surviving something like that calls for a week of relaxation, with nothing but movies, cartoons and writing.

  

My mother, however, as most mothers are wont to do, did not see it that way. It turns out that, unlike me, she had actually noticed the growing pile of papers and strewn clothes accumulating around my room over the last week… and the only reason she had kept her peace was because she didn’t want me to use the ensuing conflict as an excuse in case the exam went south.

What I want you to take from that last line is how resourceful I can be when occasion warrants. 

When Stress Does The Talking

I have been extremely scatterbrained of late. If you have been following me long enough, you might have noticed that for the second time in my entire blogging career (which happens to be 5 months and seven days to the date), I have ignored Golden Rule... (or my Only Rule, but the other way sounded much cooler) ... my three to four day cycle of posting.

I think (thankfully), I’m well past the point where I thought if I slipped up, I would start unravelling, and then lose it altogether. Like my buddy N said; I might have come too far to quit now.

Everything changed the moment he said that. Till that point, it was like I was walking into the Minotaur’s lair, that ball of string in my hand and everything. Sure, I was stepping into darkness, possible death and destruction awaiting me a little further in.

But, see, the light from the door was spilling from behind me, and all the while I had the reassuring feeling that if things went south, I could make a dash for that door and pretend that the whole thing had been a nightmare.

Of Pacts and Impacts

There I am, minding my own business.

I’m in my zone; on my bed, my laptop on my lap, the pillows behind me, cushion under my ankles, and the KEEP OUT sign hanging on my door. Yes, the sign that everyone ignores.

What am I doing? Researching bows, financial statements, arrowheads, recent exchange rate fluctuations, YouTube videos on dual sword wielding; with the exam coming up, I try to stay focused. And for legal purposes, note that I say ‘try’.

 I always use a mouse with my laptop. I’m still not used to the touchpad yet, and probably might never be. What you need to know for the purpose of this tale is that my right arm was resting on the bed next to me, and right hand was on the mouse.

I feel a tingly, tickly sensation just below my elbow. I ignore it. See, I’ve lived in this room for a few years, and I have over the months familiarized myself with its other inhabitants. It’s a dictatorship, yes; but it’s fair for all. Simple rule: stay out of my way and I won’t stomp you.

Come within reach and you will die. Crawl over my foot and you will die. Zip back and forth more than four times across the floor in plain view and you will die. The last would be especially personal since it would have made me get up from whatever I was doing and then have to settle back in again after it was done. Totally unnecessary for both parties concerned.

So there’s a tingly feeling on my arm, and I ignored it. Might be a mosquito, which I’ll kill in a while, or a fly, which I’m too lazy to chase after with the swatter. The tingling doesn’t stop, so I finally glance down.

On Makeovers and Making Do

Quite a few things happened in the last two days since the previous post. Firstly, by some lucky coincidence, my contribution to The Iron Writer Challenge #62 managed to pull through and get voted the best. Have to admit, I did not see that coming. This would be the same thing I wrote about three posts ago.

So now that I passed the initiation, I guess I really am a member of the Iron Writers… and this win has put me up for what they call the Summer Open; so I’m back up there on the 26^th of June. This time, against the winners of the other weekly Challenges.

As if that wasn’t enough for me, I went ahead and asked Brian to sign me up for another Challenge. So, C68 has my name on it, and that’s the 5^th of June. Better hope for another miracle.

And speaking of miracles… we got our telephone line restored a day ago, and Wi-Fi is officially back up and running again here at home. Until, of course, the next big disaster.

These past 48 days have been extremely illuminating to me. Here’s some of what I’ve managed to learn: 

·         Getting pissed off will not, by any means, be of the slightest help to you if the object/person that you are pissed off at is not within crushing/strangling reach,

·         The mood of your mother will depreciate at a rate faster than that of yours when you are in an emotionally disturbed state. This rate of depreciation will accelerate in direct proportion with the cost of objects that get mortally affected during outbursts

·         If you though that the public sector was lazy and incompetent before you found yourself in a crisis that required their assistance, your faith in that belief is only strengthened as time goes along,

And most important of all:

·         When there’s nothing else to do… just start writing.

May the Month Be With Me

Believe it or not, it’s May already.

We’re already five months into 2014, and yet sometimes I still forget it isn’t 2013 anymore. For instance, every time I remove the battery or SIM card on my beat up old Nokia, I get prompted to reset the time when I switch it on again.

I continuously find myself always having travel to settings immediately after. You know why; to find the “Time and Date” option and change the year to 2014 again.

Nope, I still haven’t settled. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll only truly feel the 2014 vibe somewhere in September. By that point, January will roll around in the blink of an eye and I’ll be stuck till September 2015 writing down 2014 as the date everywhere I go.

The circles of life are many, my friend. This particular one is a regular of mine.

A couple of weeks ago, I’m getting on the bus to town and I notice N’s younger brother there. I decide to go sit by him, and we begin to chat.

I ask him what’s new, and he tells me that he has his exams coming up this May. I sympathize with the guy. After all, that was me five years ago, worrying about my first big paper. But even as I say the right things, inside my head I’m going, “Aw, the wee wittle kid, still having his wee wittle…”

That’s when I literally stopped in mid-thought there, because a memory hit me so hard, it felt like I had just gotten a whack on the back of the head with a rolled up newspaper.

The Tale of The Depressed Goatee – When TIWs Gather

It was a few months ago when I joined The Iron Writers, and since then, it’s been uphill for me. The confidence I was lacking, the inspiration I needed; I found it all there, being shared out liberally among all the amazing, incredible people who make up the group.

Each and every single writer there is unique in their way, and yet at the same time, they all share one beautiful quality: they know how to have fun.

In between the soul draining, four-element-related challenges that Brian constantly manages to cook up, TIWs keep things going on the group Facebook page, and it looks like one of the job specifications of being an Iron Writer is to be able to embarrass, insult, harass and victimize fellow respected Irons on a constant basis, all in the name of sharing laughs.

 Wars of words rage, and alliances form and break off quicker than those in Westeros; and when the gauntlet is thrown, things are settled in what TIWs call a Grudge Match, which, though I’m still fuzzy about it, I’m willing to try out should the occasion arise.

Suffice it to say that there’s always something interesting or downright hilarious going on there. Most of the time, I watch from the sidelines and poke a cautious needle when the opportunity presents itself, but since I’m still a newbie, I try not to get right down into it.

The unexpected happened, though, when fellow Iron Writer Neal Sayatovich changed his profile picture recently, and in it he displayed a truly magnificent growth of facial hair. It literally begged for comment, and comments did it get, courtesy of yet another talented IW, Dani J Caile.

The Iron Writer Challenge #62

I have never been fond of writing flash fiction. Maybe it started back in the fourth and fifth grades when my teacher used to tell us to write essays or stories under a specific word limit. I always, always jumped that limit. I guess I always hated writing within any sort of specific barriers.

Still do.

So, probably the last thing you would think of me doing would be to join a writer’s group based around weekly and even daily flash fiction challenges.

Ask me about it a month ago and I would have been “Puh-leeze, no,”

But when Brian Rogers himself, the man behind the Iron Writer Challenge, ask you to join… you would be crazy not to.

And so join I did, and in doing so, chalked up one more thing right that I’ve done as your friendly neighborhood anonymous Mathew.

The basic structure of the Iron Writer challenge; four authors are given four days to come up with a five hundred word piece of any genre that contains four given elements. And Brian never lets his people have it easy, no. He just thinks up the most incompatible, mismatched, unusable objects and then meshes them together for each week’s challenge.

New Life To Old Thoughts

There comes a time in the life of every writer when he/she sits down at their laptop ready to work, and finds, to their dismay, that their minds are as blank as the page in front of them.

To date, it has not been scientifically proven whether not this affliction is contagious, and reports concerning its possible fatal consequences have not as yet been confirmed.

That said, it is one mangy pest of a nuisance when it hits; and the handful of survivors out there can attest to how doubly hard it is to get rid of. A few cures to it have been found by veteran writers; divine inspiration being one of them, but for some reason, that doesn’t seem to be as common as it once was in the Renaissance era.

Simple inspiration, on the other hand, is a little more common, yet, alas, not common enough in day to day life to send this miserable affliction the same merry way as smallpox. (It was merry for us, at least). Examples of such inspiration would be a movie, a book, a conversation, or a grain of thought that can take root and blossom into something as far away from a blank page as… well, a piece of writing.

On Phone Calls and Writing Bursts

Ever wanted to know how to become famous among your extended family? How to rise through the ranks of gossip topics that your aunts tear to bits at every family gathering?

Well, hunt no more, weary seeker. Through toil and torture I have searched and yearned (no, not really), but at long last, I have found a sure fire, two step method with guaranteed results.

It’s simple.

a)      Get an injury. Doesn’t have to be major, should just be large enough to constantly remind people of its existence and be a nuisance enough to make you complain about it once in a while just for kicks.

b)      Let your mother find out.

I had my incredible acrobatic feat at midnight Saturday in the Big City; and it was a full twenty four hours before I got home. I hadn’t told mum about my little predicament, obviously; but there’s no way to hide a drooping, swollen lip when it’s quite literally on your face.

It was kind of like Andrew Garfield turning around and showing Aunt May his face after his first night out in a proper Spidey costume, which, quite by chance, involved a close and extremely personal introduction with the front and side of a moving bus. I know, my cut was barely a fraction of what he had on his face, but the respective expressions involved in that exchange were pretty much the same: my mother was like “Oh God, what happened to you, how could this….” etc., and I was all, “It’s nothing, Mum, please, please go back to sleep…”

Of Flash Cards And Talking Dummies

Remember when I said I was having a lousy stretch of luck these days? Well, it hadn’t even begun yet. You know how they say that magicians save their best for last; well, call Fate a performer, because on Saturday night, Fate did exactly that, just for ’lil old me.

It was close to 1am, and I was in the kitchen, just heading off to sleep after a glass of water. I registered stepping  into a puddle, and that’s when my mind hit the Fast-forward button. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and my chin was throbbing like a Harley-Davidson, if that makes any sense.

I was back in that calm, contemplatory state of higher being for a few seconds. I lay there on the ground, all serene and placid, and prodded inside my mouth with my tongue. When comprehension took me, (a few good minutes later) it was that I was feeling a gaping hole where there should not have been any hole.

My first thought, I swear to you: “Oh, there’s a hole in my mouth. Good thing I already had that glass of water,”

Then, my mind got slightly clearer, and my next thought made slightly more sense: “Why is there a hole in my mouth?”

I had fallen face first onto cold, hard tiles. My feet had literally flown backwards behind me, and I guess I would have made a perfect entry to America’s Funniest Home Videos, awesome falls category. Now I know what those poor souls felt like.

Here, There, Somewhere

All in all, I have to admit that this has been a really, really bad period for me. Not just inspiration-wise, luck-wise, or internet-wise, but also pretty much everything-else-wise, too.

I have been having really, really slow going getting inspired these days. This blog was supposed to help inspire me to start writing again, and so it has. But blog writing is very different from novel writing, as all writers would probably agree. It takes very, very little to put someone off novel writing when they are in a slump and trying to make their way to fit word to paper (or screen, as the case may be).

With me, the lack of internet, which usually in no way has any direct correlation with novel writing (no, wait, the relationship is inverse; the more internet I have, the less time I have to write) aaaaand I lost track of where I was. Where was I?

Ah, yes. The internet, which usually makes me write less, is now gone, and for that reason, I am in no mood at all to write. Makes sense? Not at all, and yet here I am, determinedly sticking to this excuse like a guy standing smugly on ice that is both visibly and audibly cracking ominously all around him.