October events, and a prompt

The prompt for Saturday, October 19 is from KK: "Wrapped in plastic and floating down the river." Here are a few of the literary events happening around the area - ours, and those being put on by our friends or like-minded individuals!

Thursday, October 17: Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective presents Third Thursday Poetry Night Open Mic at The Vintage, 326 Spruce Street, Scranton - featuring Dead Poets! Come dressed as your favorite dead poet and recite some of their poetry FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Or come as yourself and show those spirits that the living can hold their own when it comes to poetry! All are welcome. Admission is free. Signups begin at 8:00 PM, poetry at 8:30 PM, supernatural phenomena shortly thereafter.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/555421117839809/


Friday October 18: Third Friday Spoken Word, Pre-Halloween Bash with Featured Performer Kyle Rebar at Arts Seen on the Square, 21 Public Square, Wilkes-Barre. Free and open to the public. Sign-ups begin at 7:30, readings at 8:00. And hear the words of Featured Performer Kyle Rebar: "I'm going to be in COSTUME, and so should you, if you come, so come! Legend has it that the ENTIRE evening might be a giant performance piece. Only one way to find out!" Wear a costume for extra Carlton points!

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1420252018198484/


Saturday October 19: Breaking Ground Poets present Buddy Wakefield at 2:00 PM at TwentyFiveEight Studios, 703 North Washington Avenue, Scranton (behind Cooper's Seafood.) Tickets are $15 and must be bought in advance. You can buy them here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/417951 .


Sunday October 20: Weekly Sunday Open Mic at The Living Room, 522 Main Street (next to The Sherman Theater), Stroudsburg. Sign-ups begin at 6:30. Music, dancing, poetry, prose, and quite a few other things.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OpenMicAtTheLivingRoom


October 25 DOUBLE HEADER!

Friday, October 25 (and the last Friday of each month): Open Mic at Embassy Vinyl (325 Adams Ave, Scranton) hosted by Charlotte Rusalka! First Come - First Serve - no feature, 3 to 5 minutes! Begins at 7PM!

Friday October 25 at 7:00 PM: release party for Brian Fanelli's "All that Remains," starting at 7:00 PM, at The Vintage, 326 Spruce Street, Scranton.

Poet Brian Fanelli will celebrate the release of his new full-length collection, All That Remains (Unbound Content) at The Vintage Theater on October 25th 2013. All are invited to attend this literary event which will include live readings of selections by the author. Following the reading, the author will sign books. 

Prompt for August 3, and 24 hour Art Event at The Vintage

The prompt for this week comes from the latest poem by Alvin K Nurse: "constant monkey chatter."

Also, the NEPWC has been asked to take part in The Vintage's 24-hour Art Event! Stay tuned for details.

Prompt for July 27

This week's prompt comes from Leslee: "The gloves lay on the ground by my feet."

Third Thursday is July 18; plus, more prompts!

Getting the word out early: the July Third Thursday Open Mic Poetry Night will be Thursday, July 18, and will also see the return of the Featured Reader. The Feature for July be Alvin K. Nurse, whose poetry draws from the many twists and turns his life so far has taken. Get there early to sign up to read, and be sure to stick around for Alvin's presentation! Signups begin at 8:00, poetry begins at 8:30. The event takes place at The Vintage, 326 Spruce Street, Scranton, and as always, admission is free!

I wasn't able to get the prompts for this past weekend posted, but they were

With words it takes longer

and

You got one thing right

The prompts for Saturday, July 13 are

You've got to romance me first

and

The air smelled like bacon

The Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective meets every Saturday from 1:00 - 3:00 at The Vintage in Scranton. New members are always welcome. See you there!

A whole mess of prompts

I've been slacking off with prompts lately. Here are some recent ones.

"I eat fortune cookies for good luck," from a poem by Wendell Bullock. Wendell rewrote the prompt into one of his boxing sketches for last weekend's meeting.

Older than that is this from K.K.: "Life is like a game. Some people get the green cards, and some people  get the pink." If you missed Chaz's two-person play short play based on this prompt - well, maybe if you ask very nicely, he'll present it again.

Another older prompt: "She's not into me," again proposed by K.K.

There are two prompts from the most recent meeting: "Lying is his native language," a line from (I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong) a very old poem by K.K.  The other, proposed by Marion, is "Is this about anything?", which was a comment someone made about something presented this weekend.

Use any of these, or all of them, or none of them. Now, get writing!

Prompt for June 1, 2013

The prompt for this Saturday comes from poet/playwright/author/regular guy K.K. Gordon: "Nah. Gave that up."

Third Thursday, and some prompts

Third Thursday Open Mic Poetry (and Prose) readings for this month will be held Thursday, May 16 at The Vintage, 326 Spruce Street, Scranton. Sign-ups start at 8:00 PM, and readings begin at 8:30 PM. Admission is free, and all are invited!


Prompts for the May 18 meeting come to us from KK:

The office girl looked terrified and annoyed.

and/or

I've already thrown the dirt on your grave.

Prompt for May 4 and 11 was

It has to have a gun.

Our meetings are held every Saturday at The Vintage from 1:00 - 3:00 PM. All are welcome! Bring a poem or prose piece to present to the group!

Prompt for April 27

"I'll hurt you if you stay."

Prompt for April 20

The prompt for April 20 is from Rusted Root by way of K.K.: "Lift me up with golden hands."

Prompt and Superprompt

We wrapped up the normal meeting quickly on Saturday, so we took Chaz's suggestion of a "free write": ten minutes of quiet time dedicated to writing from a new prompt. The prompt Leslee chose was "rat poison," and we came up with diverse pieces of flash fiction: new member Vanessa told a tale of a quiet neighbor who has suddenly asked the story's narrator to pick up some rat poison at the store - even though the neighbor keeps a scrupulously clean house; Alvin wrote a story based on a true incident about a group of kids and their dog engaging in a fearless rat hunt - no rat poison needed (adding the phrase "beating a dead rat" to the vernacular);  Leslee wrote of a class that tries to have some fun with a substitute teacher by supplying her with false names (including "Rat Poison",) and how she turns the tables on them with a writing assignment; Marion wrote of two siblings, a hoarder and an anti-hoarder, and a dispute over an ancient container of rat poison; Leslie also wrote about two siblings, resuming their bickering after a temporary truce in the wake of their mother's death; and Harold wrote a story involving Ratt, Poison, and numerous other relics of mid-80's culture - and a woman who has chosen to live in the past, rather than join the modern world of iPhones, dubstep, and half-gallons of ice cream that are only a quart and a half.

Anyone else is welcome to write to the prompt of "rat poison" for next week. Try limiting yourself to just ten minutes of writing and see what you can come up with!

We also floated what Alvin described as a "superprompt": a "story seed" or beginning of a modified "exquisite corpse" story. Harold supplied the opening. Everyone else is welcome to take that starting point and run with it, wherever they see fit, possibly limiting themselves to three paragraphs or so, so they can then hand off their stories to the group to see where others might take them.

Here is the "superprompt" story seed:


Tim didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when he first came home. Pat was gone for the weekend, so he had the place to himself. He unlocked the front door, stepped inside, turned off the alarm, closed the door, took off his jacket, and tossed it over a chair. He stepped into the kitchen to fix himself a drink and heard an unfamiliar crunch under his shoes.

He was walking on broken glass.

The window over the sink was smashed, and glass was scattered around the kitchen.

He stopped moving and tried to assess the situation. Someone or something had smashed through the window.  Whoever or whatever it was would have made a hell of a racket coming through the window, but was stealthy or clever enough to avoid setting off the motion detectors - part of the alarm system he had shut off a minute ago.

Were they still here? It seemed likely. He knew that he should run, get out of the house, get in his car and call the police from there, but he felt rooted to the spot. Somebody was in his house - his house - and he wanted to confront them, not run away.

Tim stared at the broken glass and listened for any sounds that would give away the presence of someone else in the house. He didn't hear breathing, or snoring, or anything. But he did see spots of blood on the floor, scattered among the shards of glass.. Whoever or whatever had come through the window was injured and bleeding.


Where will you go with this? Write the next few paragraphs - or even chapters! - of the story, and bring them to next week's meeting!

Prompts and promptings for Saturday, April 6

At last week's meeting, Leslie pulled two prompts out of the book "642 Things to Write About."

Prompt 1: Choose how you will die.

Prompt 2: Write a scene where the only spoken dialogue is "Uh-huh," "Umm," "Errr...," and "Mm-mmm."

Harold suggested that for our next project we do a sort of "exquisite corpse" story - where one member writes a section and passes it off to another member, who will write another section and pass it on again.

Chaz suggested starting the meeting with an "open write," setting aside a few minutes for each member to write whatever comes to mind.

Our next meeting is Saturday, April 6 at the Vintage in Scranton starting at 1:00.

Writing prompt challenge: expanded and revised edition!

The writing prompt challenge has been extended for another week to March 30! And I forgot to list a critical piece of it last time - a second prompt!

The challenge is to write "Flash Fiction", a short-short story of six hundred words or less, using one of these two prompts:

• During the long Arctic nights we held grave discussions.

or

• And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again - yes.

Present your story at next Saturday's the March 30 meeting at the Vintage, and the group will decide on a winner! We've already had three presentations, from Leslee, Harold, and Wendell, and they can revise and re-present their work, too!


For more on flash fiction see these sites:

Flash Fiction Online: http://flashfictiononline.com/main/
FlashFiction.net: http://flashfiction.net/
Flash Fiction World: http://www.flash-fiction-world.com/
Flash Fiction Friday: http://www.flashfictionfriday.com/

Writing prompt challenge!

Leslee Klapp came up with a contest at the March 2 meeting. First, the group would collectively decide on a prompt. Then, since we will not be meeting on March 9 due to the Scranton St. Patrick's Day Parade, we would have two weeks to compose short-short stories - flash fiction - of no more than six hundred words that use the prompt either in the title or somewhere in the story. The group will collectively decide on the best story, and the writer of that story will win a prize!...of some sort.

We grabbed random books scattered around the loft of the Vintage and began pulling out sentences for consideration. The group then voted, and we settled on one to be the prompt:

During the long Arctic nights we held grave discussions.

So. That's the challenge. Using that prompt as the title or part of the story, write a story of six hundred words or less for presentation at the March 16, 2013 meeting. The group will vote on all presented works, and the best story will win a prize. Good luck, and get writing!

Prompt for Saturday, September 29

From K.K.: "You and your yellow lightning."

Prompt for September 22, 2012

The prompt for next Saturday was inspired by one of Chaz's poems this week: "Writing our own self-help book."

Prompt for September 15, 2012

"Did someone say 'medieval?'"