And so another session of Write Club shudders to a gasping halt.
Two of us were working right up to the last minute this week. I only just made the deadline due to both cars dying on us and numerous other family emergencies piled one atop one other like corpses on a 14th century hand cart.
Tanglebranch had a bit of a health hic-cup that forced her to write her story from a hospital bed (did I mention that Write Club members are hand picked for being hard as fucking nails?). Which didn’t stop her from writing a stellar piece on a human female encapsulating the soul of a dead dragon hell-bent on revenge.
Caleb threw the cat amongst the pigeons with a piece about a mass murder (and sexual deviant) who doesn’t get his comeuppance in the end.
The death of the god of gods was the subject of Xanderslee’s Among Them. Proving once and for all that immortality is no more than a fleeting concept to be toyed with on a writer’s whim.
Jayna took us back to Whimden, where she has based her other two Write Club stories, with a beautifully written piece exploring a day in the life of a family.
Corpses played another prominent role in Greg’s space opera story of a man who loses his wings and finds another way.
An aging, drug addled, punk rock legend finally goes the way of anarchy in Jordan’s The Terror. Flawlessly written, as ever.
When the dust settled, Jayna and I are the only writers that haven’t killed any characters this week.
I know, I know, I need to try harder.
Mine?
Um.
Mine had space ships and a bucket and an alien parasite and a pretty woman and a bug hunter and…
Sheesh
I’m not going to tell you what I did with the pretty woman, the alien and the bucket. It would be fair to say that it wasn’t the most mundane scene I have yet portrayed. Oh, there were stock cubes and beers too.
It was… inventive.
And so we come to another Sunday and another prompt by another member of the team. We’re all pretty psyched up. Looking for something inspiring to work towards when Greg posts on The Writer’s Block that he’s fired up the prompt.
I don’t know whether you recall the despair that followed Jordan’s prompt announcement that the story had to be a metaphor in week two when what we were expecting was a mountain range or a tar pit or a sentient cephalopod or something vaguely fucking normal.
Well, it appears that Jordan and Greg are cut from the same cloth and have been slurping down the same psychotropic mushrooms. The next story is to be written from the perspective of an Unreliable Narrator. The example cited a story from none less than Edgar Allen Poe. He of the “I became insane, with long periods of horrible sanity.” quote.
Have you any inking of how difficult that is going to be? I mean, I’m vaguely frigging normal. This is a sodding nightmare. Nobody said Write Club was going to be easy but, really? Unless I have a flashback, I’m gonna have to get pissed as a newt to pull this off.
Personally, I’d take the fucking cephalopod any day!
Pseudopods. I’d even do pseudopods.
Anyone?
No?
Fuck!
You want Edgar Allen Poe? I’ll give you his bastard grandchild born of Samuel Taylor and H.P. Lovecraft. A thousand thousand slimy things writhing upon a slimy, tentacled, pan-dimensional god!
You know I’ll do it! Look in the bucket!
Wipes spittle off the monitor
See what you made me do?
Now, where did I put my Cthulhu eraser?
Oh good lord. You've already gone over the edge.
A prime location to begin writing for Greg's prompt.
I consider myself uniquely qualified for a post that requires the narrator to be barking mad.
How difficult can it be?
You had to bring up the bucket! I can’t un-read that passage or un-remember it, no matter how hard I try! But seriously, great summary. And of course we are all doomed with this new prompt. Goodbye Whimden, hello Cthulhu!
We don't need to say goodbye to Whimden. Perhaps this is just the kind of wake up call a sleepy little town needs. Cthulhu in the lake.
I'm happy to write it but we'll need to rename the place Whim...per.
Ba-dum-shhh! Nice. :-)
We shall see. I was thinking of renaming the town Whimsical and having everything be about fairies. But then of course Cthulhu comes and they are all crushed like bugs. I'm sure it will be a best seller!
So...what you're saying is we need to make the prompts more difficult?
Let's just not go there.
High five John. You and me, we dragged it in under the wire, parasites notwithstanding, lol.
You know, we spend our writing time trying to put down words that sound credible. And now we're supposed to put down words that are credibly uncredible? Have I mastered credibility??? I dont even know.
So... if you're up for some late-night brie-and-necronomicon sessions so we can pull this off... I'll bring the brie
You're on. I'll go dig out the crackers. And chorizo. And little pickled onions. Maybe some Port Salut? Definately jalapenos and a box of Chardonnay...
You kill me XD Please don’t have an aneurysm, this will all turn out well somehow. Your anger was very tangible in this :P
I don't get angry. It just looks that way because I sweat swear words.
That gave me a delightful image XD
I love these updates. Just a glimpse inside the crazy world of Write Club and the even more... unique... mind of the Rat Bastard!
Unique... That sounds so much better than the alternatives.