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Lightening up.... (Angst-Free Week)
UPDATE on the updated update: Oh dear. So here I've gotten you on this angst-free track and now the rains are back. HAVE HEART! Find the sunshine in your minds. Create fiction, write poetry about daffodils, think outside your personal box. ... (gg)
my earlier post...
YWPers,
So here's a confusion I have... The weather has been nicer than we've seen in, well, months. The trees are budding. The school year is, actually, drawing to a close. Summer looms.
And yet we've had, lately, some of the darkest posts in a while, folks revealing how sad they are, how lonely they feel, how much they don't like about themselves, how angry they are with a "certain" person.
Egads, I say. Isn't there something we as a community can do?
Yes we can provide supportive comments, but that seems to beget more lonely posts. I do realize that many of you are screaming out for some comfort, and I have been heartened by how willing others are to provide support, but...
I have an an idea.
An Angst-Free Week. Prose only. NO first-person unless in fiction and clearly the narrator is a character VERY different than the writer.
So write about the weather. Write about something funny. Write about something amazing that happened. Make it up. But get outside yourselves. For a week.
What do you think? Can it be done? Do you need a prompt? A bag of M&Ms for the best piece? What?
IF YOU ARE MOVED TO SWEAR OFF ANGST FOR A WEEK, use the keyword angst-free in your keywords so we can find all these wonderful pieces and write about life outside "I".
gg
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I'm in - bring it.
I'm in - bring it.
rant
Isn't the current prompt to Rant and write about something that bothers us?
true that...
But a rant is different than angst... a rant is more active, it's getting it out, its clearing the air, as it were... I see a rant as something that bugs you about something OUTSIDE yourself, like how pissed I am that my cell phone sometimes doesn't work... or that the City of Winooski gives you a parking ticket... or that Congress can spike earmarks (including a grant to YWP) and then NOT EVEN CONSIDER FOR A NANO SECOND a proposal to eliminate the $2+ BILLION of annual tax breaks to the oil companies...
But you have a point.
gg
Got it. Build yoursel up.
Got it. Build yoursel up. Rant about other stuff. Cool.
GG,
This is great! I'm in :)
§ambo
(Translucent Roses)
I think this is a great idea.
I think this is a great idea. Everyone could use a little lightheartedness right about now. But yea, I'll do this!
AWWW YEAH.
I've been dreaming of this for years. It's been my main complaint ever since I joined.
Why is poetry banned outright, though? What about narrative poetry? The form itself isn't inherently self-centered.
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"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation."
nonnie
The reason I like to nudge you guys away from poetry is that sometimes poetry becomes the easy way out as in, I am feeling something so I'll put it in some free form poetry that sounds kind of mysterious and ya it might not make total sense but that's ok because it's poetry...
Doing prose forces you to be more narrative...
But they don't call me Gumby for nothing. So I'm cool with narrative poetry. I mean just look at Rebecca_v's stuff or, for that matter, some of yours...
gg
Excellent.
I'm excited. (starts plotting)
I'm in. There is so much
I'm in. There is so much drama at the end of the school year and I need a break. THis is going to be pleasant. :) Can't wait to read everyone's happy thoughts!
ha. I agree whole-heartedly
there's way too much drama right now. I'm totally in!
♪♫AlexisLynn♫
La critique est aisée, mais l'art est difficile.
Genius, pure genius. I am in.
Genius, pure genius. I am in.
Rebecca
Ditto on the "genius". Count
Ditto on the "genius". Count me in!
Houston...Do we have lift off?
So glad you guys like this concept, so when do you want to start and, if you have already, make sure you use the keyword I used, angst-free so we can have an angst-free experience finding your angst-free writing...
And is it M&Ms? Big Bag?
(YWP will mail the M&Ms one at a time to your home ...
... just joking)
gg
Angst-free week
How does the angst-free committee feel about historical fiction?
I'm in, by the way, historical fiction or not :)
Can we submit more than one
Can we submit more than one piece?
I wish I were pretty/I wish I were brave/If I owned this city/I would make it behave -Let the Rain, Sara Bareilles
clarification...
i'm in, but just to clarify: is poetry allowed? if not don't expect anything from me for another 5 years, i take forever when i don't write poetry, but i will try because i agree that we should have A LOT less angstyness. (it's been making me sad inside)
c'mon guys! lets smile!! :)
5 years?
egads.
wax poetic then.
can't have you absent for 5 years!
gg
Sounds like a challenge I'll
Sounds like a challenge I'll be happy to take you up on. No angst, no I. When is this happening?
-LN
I'm not trying to ruin anybody's life. Sometimes I'm just really, really bad at doing people favors.
Explanation.
The reason all of our posts are so dark is because it's a prompt requirement. They're all about what disturbs you or houses burning down of embarasing mistakes. There was even a prompt called "sad" Make the prompts something about spring or something for angst free work.
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If it's better to give then to receive, then whenever you give, you make someone else receive, so which one is worse?
-Sheldon Ward
playing devil's advocate:
One could just as easily write fiction about any of those topics. I think that "angst" here means "endless rehashing of one's personal issues", rather than just anything less-than-positive.
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"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation."
This is a FANTASTIC Idea!! We
This is a FANTASTIC Idea!! We are completely immersed in angst and drama these days; Between "Proma" (Prom Drama), school/friend related drama, and popular television shows, like Glee, or The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Not to say I am angst-free all the time, or that I don't love these shows; I do.
To be able to express angst-free related pieces will be a challenge, but I am totally up for it.
Hey, GG --
I'd love to read some more of the entries, but I can't see anything past lovetowrite's "3/24/11" because of some odd formatting... Anything you can do to fix that?
On it.
Got it. Everyone: when copy-pasting from Word, PLEASE go through the "Paste from Word" function. It's the botton at the top left of the toolbar, the one that looks like a clipboard with the Word W above it. Otherwise, some invisible coding tags along and screws up webpages.
--
Thanks, Bee.