Expansion Joints Challenge: part 13: "Sacrifce"

When this exercise was hosted over at Porky's Expanse!, he always chose the word for the Expanders! challenge based on some relevant happening. The explanation of how this week's word was chosen is long: I understand if you don't want to wade through it. The clever among you know what to do if that is the case.

Here in the US, we are in the middle of the weekend leading up to Memorial Day, which this year falls on its original date of May 30th. For many people here, this holiday is barely a blip on their radar; it simply means a chance to have three days off in a row, or a chance to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation, a chance to shop the sales, a day to break out the barbecue and the beer and party. This has always mystified me. For my family, remembering dead soldiers was never a abstract idea: we have a long tradition of military service, and there were and are always names and faces, stories and pictures of men - brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, brothers-in-arms, some generations back, others fresh in memory - who went away and never came home. Iraq and Afghanistan have only added to the roster. So, even though they might make for interesting choices in other circumstances, the words that most of my neighbors might choose for this week fall flat for me: "grill", "tan", "break", or "shop" are not on the list right now. Still, I understand that what is so intensely personal for people who have lost (or even risked) family and friends in military service can not have the same meaning for those who have never had that experience, so "lose", "cry", and even "remember" wouldn't really work in general, and none of them express the mood of the day clearly, anyway. The sense that I have the urge to convey has much more to do with the reasons why these people did what they did, and the reasons why it is worthy of honor and respect, rather than the simple fact that they died, which, after all, is something none of us (or very few, depending on your religious persuasion) get to avoid. It is something that is deeply tied up with the concept of heroism, which is, of course, a huge element of fiction, particularly in Fantasy and SF. The only word that I can find that has even one meaning that captures what I find so compelling about the day, that essence of being willing to give up everything so that something more important is preserved, is "sacrifice", and that is the word for the week.

If you aren't familiar with the Expansion Joints project, it all began over at Porky's Expanse!.

The rules are just as they are described over at Porky's: as much narrative as you can cram into fifteen words, one of which must be the word of the week.

This can take the form of

1. An epyllion,or litle epic, a stand-alone fifteen-word narrative, or

2. An epos, or 'epic'. Instead of an independent 15-word story, you can choose to develop someone else's story from a previous week, or extend your own story from week to week. Just write the next installment. If it has 15 words, uses the word of the week, and continues the story, you've done it.

There are two important things to think about if you choose epos. First, you should have the permission of the person who wrote the story you will develop. If anyone writes a 15-word epyllion or adds to an epos and is happy for others to develop it later, please say so, with something like 'for use in an epos'. Second, by using specific elements of someone else's story, we technically create a derivative work, so it's best to avoid this.

There are a number of generous contributors who have given express permission to use some of their writing as the basis for epos:

Porky, the founder of the project, offers up all of his contributions.

GDMNW has opened up the three stories here.

Dave G_Nplusplus makes any of his Expanders! stories available for use in an epos.

Arlequin has an epos running on his Expanders! page, and he has graciously extended permission to play with any or all of the contributions there.

Andy, over at The Creepy Corridor, has also made his epos posts available for expansion.

And, as always, feel free to use any of the stories on this blog that are tagged as "Expansion Joints" in an epos.

Words that have previously made an appearance in an Expanders!/Expansion Joints include: food, fort, stuff, elf, rogue, pass, fool, hammer, note, temper, table, twisted, and missing, in case you are of an historical bent, or wish to write a complete set.

When you've finished writing your entry for this week, either post your 15-word story directly in the comments here, or leave a link in the comments to the blog page where we can find it.

Flash Fearsday / Expansion Joints: part 12, "Missing"

This is my response to the May 19th, 2011 Flash Fearsday exercise over at Lunching on Lamias, which challenges you to write a horror story in exactly 140 characters, and my response to this week's Expansion Joints Challenge. I'm following Porky's lead, and making my writing pull double duty this week.

Zombies again, but from a little different perspective.

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"Post-traumatic catatonia?"
"Substantially..."
"Really, what's worse than shooting your zombie wife?"
The psychiatrist shuddered.
"Missing."

Expansion Joints Challenge; part 12, "Missing"

When this exercise was hosted over at Porky's Expanse!, he always chose the word for the Expanders! challenge based on some relevant happening that had occurred during the previous week. The happening that has been dominating my personal experience, at least in the blogosphere, for the past week has been the disappearance of blog posts and comments from Blogger blogs, specifically, my own. (Of course, the loss of some entries to the Random Spaceport Encounters living table over at Lunching on Lamias is a minor tragedy in itself.) I have been reluctant to post anything new, in the fear that changes to my blog might complicate the restoration efforts, but I have reason now to hope that new posts won't interfere with old ones, so I am back, and with me, the Expansion Joints Challenge. I have found that the April A-Z really did get me into the habit of posting more regularly, and it has been surprisingly hard to refrain from doing so while I waited for the return of the posts that vanished. In acknowledgment of both the absent posts and the longing to get back to the blog, the word for the week is "missing".

If you aren't familiar with the Expansion Joints project, it all began over at Porky's Expanse!.

The rules are just as they are described over at Porky's: as much narrative as you can cram into fifteen words, one of which must be the word of the week.

This can take the form of

1. An epyllion,or litle epic, a stand-alone fifteen-word narrative, or

2. An epos, or 'epic'. Instead of an independent 15-word story, you can choose to develop someone else's story from a previous week, or extend your own story from week to week. Just write the next installment. If it has 15 words, uses the word of the week, and continues the story, you've done it.

There are two important things to think about if you choose epos. First, you should have the permission of the person who wrote the story you will develop. If anyone writes a 15-word epyllion or adds to an epos and is happy for others to develop it later, please say so, with something like 'for use in an epos'. Second, by using specific elements of someone else's story, we technically create a derivative work, so it's best to avoid this.

There are a number of generous contributors who have given express permission to use some of their writing as the basis for epos:

Porky, the founder of the project, offers up all of his contributions.

GDMNW has opened up the three stories here.

Dave G_Nplusplus makes any of his Expanders! stories available for use in an epos.

Jim Hale has an epos running on his Expanders! page, and he has graciously extended permission to play with any or all of the contributions there.

Andy, over at The Creepy Corridor, has also made his epos posts available for expansion.

And, as always, feel free to use any of the stories on this blog that are tagged as "Expansion Joints" in an epos.

Words that have previously made an appearance in an Expanders!/Expansion Joints include: food, fort, stuff, elf, rogue, pass, fool, hammer, note, temper, table, and twisted, in case you are of an historical bent, or wish to write a complete set.

When you've finished writing your entry for this week, either post your 15-word story directly in the comments here, or leave a link in the comments to the blog page where we can find it.

Flash Fearsday: Stopping By Late

I told her that I would be late when I stopped by her house, which made the weapons and the screams of "Zombie!" that much more puzzling.

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This is my response to the May 5th, 2011 Flash Fearsday exercise over at Lunching on Lamias, which challenges you to write a horror story in exactly 140 characters.

Expansion Joints Challenge: part 11, "Twisted"

When this exercise was hosted over at Porky's Expanse!, he always chose the word for the Expanders! challenge based on some relevant happening that had occurred during the previous week. I do have standards, occasionally, so drawing from the obvious headlines was out: "shot", "terror", "compound" and "mission", while perfectly good candidates that might well make appearances in other circumstances, were rapidly eliminated, along with "eliminated". I'm not as active a blog reader or writer as the prodigious Porky, but a number of online coincidences, which will almost certainly be fodder for a blog post in the next day or so, have led me to ponder how and why writers, GMs, and other creative people deliberately reshape reality through intentionally distorted lenses to serve their ends. So, with that thought bouncing around in my brain trying to escape in some coherent form, the word for the week is "twisted".

If you aren't familiar with the Expansion Joints project, it all began over at Porky's Expanse!.

The rules are just as they are described over at Porky's: as much narrative as you can cram into fifteen words, one of which must be the word of the week.

This can take the form of

1. An epyllion,or litle epic, a stand-alone fifteen-word narrative, or

2. An epos, or 'epic'. Instead of an independent 15-word story, you can choose to develop someone else's story from a previous week, or extend your own story from week to week. Just write the next installment. If it has 15 words, uses the word of the week, and continues the story, you've done it.

There are two important things to think about if you choose epos. First, you should have the permission of the person who wrote the story you will develop. If anyone writes a 15-word epyllion or adds to an epos and is happy for others to develop it later, please say so, with something like 'for use in an epos'. Second, by using specific elements of someone else's story, we technically create a derivative work, so it's best to avoid this.

There are a number of generous contributors who have given express permission to use some of their writing as the basis for epos:

Porky, the founder of the project, offers up all of his contributions.

GDMNW has opened up the three stories here.

Dave G_Nplusplus makes any of his Expanders! stories available for use in an epos.

Jim Hale has an epos running on his Expanders! page, and he has graciously extended permission to play with any or all of the contributions there.

Andy, over at The Creepy Corridor, has also made his epos posts available for expansion.

And, as always, feel free to use any of the stories on this blog that are tagged as "Expansion Joints" in an epos.

Words that have previously made an appearance in an Expanders!/Expansion Joints include: food, fort, stuff, elf, rogue, pass, fool, hammer, note, temper, and table, in case you are of an historical bent, or wish to write a complete set.

When you've finished writing your entry for this week, either post your 15-word story directly in the comments here, or leave a link in the comments to the blog page where we can find it.

Poetry Potluck: Embodying Art

This is my response to this week's Poetry Potluck, which I discovered thanks to a link over at Porky's Expanse!. The theme for the week is "Doubts, Fear, Inhibitions, and Hesitations."

I feel compelled to confess that this is not, strictly speaking, a response to the Poetry Potluck prompt. It is actually a poem that I wrote several years ago, in response to another poem by a friend of mine that touched on body modification. I didn't manage to get this up in time to get it on the Poetry Potluck linky-list, ironically, largely because I was hesitant to post it, being somewhat doubtful of the appropriateness of recycling my used poetry for the blog. But it seemed to fit the theme better than anything I was likely to come up with in my current sleep-deprived state, so, despite my fears, here it is.

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Embodying Art

In the lines we create there always will dwell
the unspoken span of a once-whispered spell.
We are bound by the hopes and the hells that we trace,
by the myths we degrade and those we embrace,
implacably after pursued by the voice
that we once drew to life by an unmindful choice

and the reverberations will shatter and break
into shards the clear image we tried so to make,
to present to the world our most beautiful face.
And the wounds that those fragments engrave as we race
to contain them before they can pierce to our souls
define our new features, leave ridges and holes

where before there was softness, a smooth flowing curve;
now the scar tissue binds and compresses a nerve
and the voice, the vibrations that echo and hum,
still cannot be silenced. Relief does not come.
But the traceries deep in our minds hold us still,
bound beyond renunciation or will.

Expansion Joints: part 10, "Table"

This is my response to the May 1st, 2011 Expansion Joints Challenge. I apologize in advance...


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"We need to table this matter for further investigation!"
The department chair sighed.
"Again, Mendeleev?"

Expansion Joints Challenge: part 10, "Table"

When this exercise was hosted over at Porky's Expanse!, he always chose the word for the Expanders! challenge based on some relevant happening that had occurred during the previous week. Yesterday was the last day of the A-Z blogging challenge, so it was tempting to use something obvious like "conclusion" or "farewell", or "alphabetical"...or even "escape", but those seemed too glib, somehow, and wholly unsatisfactory. Fortunately, the last day of the challenge, Z, WAS yesterday, or you all might have been facing something like "zoetrope" or "zoomorphic". But it is over, and falling back on mining the alphabet for inspiration is out, at least for now. What to choose instead? It may be something in the air recently, or perhaps I am just paying more attention than usual, but there seems to be a spate of really creative random content generators springing up everywhere I look. In recognition of these creative efforts (and more), the word of the week is "table".

If you aren't familiar with the Expansion Joints project, it all began over at Porky's Expanse!.

The rules are just as they are described over at Porky's: as much narrative as you can cram into fifteen words, one of which must be the word of the week.

This can take the form of

1. An epyllion,or litle epic, a stand-alone fifteen-word narrative, or

2. An epos, or 'epic'. Instead of an independent 15-word story, you can choose to develop someone else's story from a previous week, or extend your own story from week to week. Just write the next installment. If it has 15 words, uses the word of the week, and continues the story, you've done it.

There are two important things to think about if you choose epos. First, you should have the permission of the person who wrote the story you will develop. If anyone writes a 15-word epyllion or adds to an epos and is happy for others to develop it later, please say so, with something like 'for use in an epos'. Second, by using specific elements of someone else's story, we technically create a derivative work, so it's best to avoid this.

There are a number of generous contributors who have given express permission to use some of their writing as the basis for epos:

Porky, the founder of the project, offers up all of his contributions.

GDMNW has opened up the three stories here.

Dave G_Nplusplus makes any of his Expanders! stories available for use in an epos.

Jim Hale has an epos running on his Expanders! page, and he has graciously extended permission to play with any or all of the contributions there.

Andy, over at The Creepy Corridor, has also made his epos posts available for expansion.

And, as always, feel free to use any of the stories on this blog that are tagged as "Expansion Joints" in an epos.

Words that have previously made an appearance in an Expanders!/Expansion Joints include: food, fort, stuff, elf, rogue, pass, fool, hammer, note, and temper, in case you are of an historical bent, or wish to write a complete set.

When you've finished writing your entry for this week, either post your 15-word story directly in the comments here, or leave a link in the comments to the blog page where we can find it.