OK:

This one, I've got an idea for early enough I might actually be able to finish it in time!

Mike

Yeesh!

I've finally gotten an idea for this one, but I won't have time to write it now...

Mike

Thanks, >>Pascoite:

The form is called a rondeau--probably the best-known one in English is John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields". I was definitely aiming for the "you'd better or else" with this one, but swapping out some words will help convey that better.

Mike

And now:

The revised version of this poem - which, again, now lives at https://www.silverblade.net/2024/09/one-last-pie-in-the-face/ - has been nominated to the preliminary ballot for this year's Rhysling Award, given out by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. It's in the "long poem" category, so it's near the bottom of the list on their webpage, and it still has to make it through the panel of jurors to get onto the final ballot. So we shall see!

Mike

>>Pascoite
>>Bad Horse

Thanks, folks!

As often happens with these 24-hour poems, everything I had planned at the beginning has changed by the time I get to the middle fo the second verse, and by then it's too late to make the revisions that need to be made. This one needs a different refrain line, for instance, though right now I have no idea what that might be. I reckon it'll come to me eventually. :)

Mike

The one suggestion:

I'd make to give the narrative a bit more "oomph" would be to play with Flurry's voice. Right now, 6-year-old Flurry and 31-year-old Flurry use pretty much the same words, the same sentence structures, seem to have the same world view informing their writing. I'd recommend making the narrative more reflective ot Flurry's growth. And you could have fun with it, too, making her get more melodramatic during her teen years--start calling Cadance "Mother" instead of "Mom," little ticks like that. What's here is very nice, but I think it'd be even better if the language reflects Flurry's character growth.

Mike

Is it unethical:

That I submitted this prompt because I had a Pony story I wanted to write with this theme? I mean, the whole point around here is that the story's supposed to follow the prompt rather than vice versa, isn't it?

Oh, alas for my various transgressions! :)

Mike

>>Pascoite

Thanks!

Goofy was pretty much the point this time, so I'm glad it came through. Now to apply a little more polish and start submitting it to various and sundry venues!

Mike

>>devas

It's happened:

Three or four times in the past. I recall the first time was during a Pony minific event, and Horizon did a fine story with the three letters "TBD" as the prompt. It ended up too long to enter in the contest, though, but you can read it here if you're interested. As for this contest, well, us writers'll hafta see what the artists come up with before we can do anything anyway... :)

Mike

>>Heavy_Mole
>>Pascoite

Thanks, folks!

The idea here is that squirrels--yeah, I prefer it as one syllable, but the dictionaries disagree--have been purposefully attacking power lines all this time--the phenomenon even has its own Wikipedia page! But we humans keep thinking it's accidental. Because that's how we humans think.

Mike

>>Pascoite
>>Heavy_Mole
>>Corinna

Thanks, folks!

As always, I have one word that throws the rhythm off because of ambiguous pronunciation. So "peculiar" will become "eccentric" before I start sending this one out to the poetry magazines. As for the French loanwords, once I had one in each of the first two stanzas, I realized that I needed one in all four, but yeah, they're supposed to rhyme with the other "ay" words.

As for whether the narrator's crazy or not, I'll leave that up to the reader. From the first word of the poem, he seems to think he's on the road to becoming an Edger Allan Poe character, but these artistic types, I've found, never seem to understand their own work... :)

Oh, and if anyone wants to hear me reading a little Hallowe'en rondeau I wrote maybe ten years ago, it's included in the 2024 SFPA Halloween Poetry Reading. The poem's called "Halloween Weather"--though I continue to insist that "Hallowe'en" needs that ' between the 'e's--and it's a little more than halfway down the page.

Mike

No entries at all:

Appropriate, I suppose, if things're like a ghost town around here... :)

Mike

I'm focusing on:

This thing for the FimFiction Pony Poetry contest, so I won't have anything this round here, alas.

Mike

>>Heavy_Mole
>>Pascoite

Thanks, folks:

I forgot all about this till just now. It needs another run through the word processor as they say--the first person narrator shjowing up at the end took me completely by surprise as I was writing, for instance--but I think there's something here worth poking at.

Mike

I tried:

Twice to submit a prompt, but I kept getting this weird error message. I posted about it in the "meta" section of the Discord channel, but I haven't been over there to see if Roger noticed. Ah, technology...

Mike

If folks want to see:

The final version of this--thanks again, >>Pascoite--it's up on the Silver Blade website with a few alterations and a slight title change, "One Last Pie in the Face."

Mike

>>Pascoite
>>Heavy_Mole

Thanks, folks:

And congrats to the other medalists! The prompt made me think of the whole "seven ages of man" thing from philosophers and Shakespeare and all those kinda guys. I also knew I'd need a seven line stanza, and my favorite is the one called Canopus after a long poem Clement Wood wrote back in the 1930s. Canopus also being a star, I had to go all cosmic, and here it is.

I think it needs one more verse, actually, each line using one of seven rhymes already established in the poem to bring it back into the present and say something about how the universes know the end is coming someday, but that day isn't today so they don't worry about it. Or something... :)

Mike

I really wanna thank:

Whoever's prompt this was. I had the best time putting a thing together for this. :)

Mike

No picture?

I understand, but still, I was hoping... :)

Mike

>>Pascoite

Thanks, Pasco:

My thought was to start it rhymed and metered and restricted, and then have it explode like ink spattered across a page into a mix of alliteration, rhymes, blank verse, free verse, and whatever. I could definitely do more to get that spattering imagery into it...

Mike

I was really:

Unsure about this prompt, but then something occurred to me, and I've actually got a rough draft finished with a couple days left to go. I can't even remember the last time that happened!

Mike

If I'd had time:

To enter this weekend, I would've done something with this picture--something about giant ghost trees, I think, or possibly the giant ghost squirrels who live in them. I may yet write it, as a matter of fact... :)

Mike

Congrats to our medalists:

And thanks, >>Rubidium, >>Heavy_Mole, and >>Chris again for the comments. Like I said earlier, I wasn't planning on entering 'cause minifics and I have never gotten along. But the prompt drew me in, and I didn't have time to do anything more than what's here before the deadline hit. I think there might be a story here somewhere, but I'm gonna hafta think about it some more. Oh, and "Rovera" is just "Rover" with an "a" at the end to make it a girls' name... :)

Mike

What >>Chris said:

I can't say that I have any idea what's going on here, either. I'd suggest jettisoning all the Roofus stuff and have the story be about Cranky moved to tears when he meets Whoa Nelly and learns that he can still hate others even with all the happiness he's fallen into. But it definitely needs some more work.

Mike

What >>Chris said:

The whole first paragraph here is kind of wasted real estate when writing a minific. I mean, all those words to say that the moon was full? But I completely agree about rewriting this to stay in Fluttershy's POV throughout. And our second piss joke this Writeoff: I'm surprised there aren't any fibrous nuggets anywhere... :)

Mike