ysabetwordsmith | Poetry Fishbowl Open!

The Poetry Fishbowl is now closed. Thank you for your time and enthusiasm. You can watch for more thumbnails to appear later. Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "anything goes." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

Stuck for ideas? You can find prompts by ...
* picking some from the Bingo Generator prompt lists.
* browsing my Serial Poetry page or QUILTBAG list for favorites.
* looking up fun things on TV Tropes.
* plugging a favorite topic into your search engine and choosing a picture that looks interesting.

What Is a Poetry Fishbowl?

Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of "stories under glass" in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him. Writing classes sometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.

In this online version of a Poetry Fishbowl, I begin by setting a theme; today's theme is "anything goes." I invite people to suggest characters, settings, and other things relating to that theme. Then I use those prompts as inspiration for writing poems.

Cyberfunded Creativity

I'm practicing cyberfunded creativity. If you enjoy what I'm doing and want to see more of it, please feed the Bard. The following options are currently available:

1) Sponsor the Fishbowl -- Here is a PayPal button for donations. There is no specific requirement, but $1 is the minimum recommended size for PayPal transactions since they take a cut from every one. You can also donate via check or money order sent by postal mail. If you make a donation and tell me about it, I promise to use one of your prompts. Anonymous donations are perfectly welcome, just won't get that perk. General donations will be tallied, and at the end of the fishbowl I’ll post a list of eligible poems based on the total funding; then the audience can vote on which they want to see posted.

2) Swim, Fishie, Swim! -- A feature in conjunction with fishbowl sponsorship is this progress meter showing the amount donated.

3) Buy It Now! -- Gakked from various e-auction sites, this feature allows you to sponsor a specific poem. If you don't want to wait for some editor to buy and publish my poem so you can read it, well, now you don't have to. Sponsoring a poem means that I will immediately post it on my blog for everyone to see, with the name of the sponsor (or another dedicate) if you wish; plus you get a nonexclusive publication right, so you can post it on your own blog or elsewhere as long as you keep the credits intact. You'll need to tell me the title of the poem you want to sponsor. I'm basing the prices on length, and they're comparable to what I typically make selling poetry to magazines (semi-pro rates according to Duotrope's Digest).

0-10 lines: $5
11-25 lines: $10
26-40 lines: $15
41-60 lines: $20
Poems over 60 lines, or with very intricate structure, fall into custom pricing.

4) Commission a scrapbook page. I can render a chosen poem in hardcopy format, on colorful paper, using archival materials for background and any embellishments. This will be suitable for framing or for adding to a scrapbook. Commission details are here. See latest photos of sample scrapbooked poems: "Sample Scrapbooked Poems 1-24-11"

5) Spread the word. Echo or link to this post on your LiveJournal, other blog, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social network.  Useful Twitter hashtags include #poetryfishbowl and #promptcall. Encourage people to come here and participate in the fishbowl. If you have room for it, including your own prompt will give your readers an idea of what the prompts should look like; ideally, update later to include the thumbnail of the poem I write, and a link to the poem if it gets published. If there is at least one new prompter or donor, I will post an extra freebie poem.

Additional Notes

1) I customarily post replies to prompt posts telling people which of their prompts I'm using, with a brief description of the resulting poem(s). If you want to know what's available, watch for those "thumbnails."

2) You don't have to pay me to see a poem based on a prompt that you gave me. I try to send copies of poems to people, mostly using the LJ message function. (Anonymous prompters will miss this perk unless you give me your eddress.) These are for-your-eyes-only, though, not for sharing.

3) Sponsors of the Poetry Fishbowl in general, or of specific poems, will gain access to an extra post in appreciation of their generosity.  While you're on the Donors list, you can view all of the custom-locked posts in that category. Click the "donors" tag to read the archive of those. I've also posted a list of other donor perks there. I customarily leave donor names on the list for two months, so you'll get to see the perk-post from this month and next.

4) After the Poetry Fishbowl concludes, I will post a list of unsold poems and their prices, to make it easier for folks to see what they might want to sponsor.

Feed the Fish!
Now's your chance to participate in the creative process by posting ideas for me to write about. Today's theme is "anything goes."  I'll be soliciting ideas for ... anything at all! Favorite characters, ideas for new ones, plot twists, stop-trope repairs, strange settings, whatever tickles your fancy.   Now's the time to bring out all your cool ideas that haven't quite fit a previous prompt call. If you manage to recommend a form that I don't recognize, I will probably pounce on it and ask you for its rules. I do have the first edition of Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms which covers most common and many obscure forms.

I'll post at least one of the fishbowl poems here so you-all can enjoy it. (Remember, you get an extra freebie poem if someone new posts a prompt or makes a donation.) The rest of the poems will go into my archive for magazine submission.

Current Mood: creative

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From:

thnidu

"Anything goes"? Okay, free association:

1. "In olden days a hint of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking. / Now Heaven knows, / Anything goes." (Cole Porter)

2. Silkpunk

1 + 2 = ...

3. Silk stockings :-)

(3i. To be hung by the chimney with care???)

Boosted:
http://thnidu.dreamwidth.org/1423308.html
http://thnidu.livejournal.com/1535764.html

Edited Date: 2015-07-21 10:00 pm (UTC)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Based on this, "silkbag" is today's freebie.

From:

chanter1944

I almost missed this! Eek!

Prompt the first, in Terramagne: How is the young man who manifested the power to see all the oppressions getting along?

Prompt the second, also in Terramagne: Inspired by a nasty encounter a friend had with a flippin' gigantic nest of paper wasps built above her driveway. Super stinging insects, and however the heck one deals with them. Ick!

Prompt the third, again with Terramagne: We know cocoa powers exist. Do coffee, tea or guarana powers exist also? I'm betting they do, and I wonder if manifestations cluster with local crops or affinities i.e. someone in Sri Lanka or England might manifest tea powers, where someone in Ethiopia or Kenya gets coffee ones. Hmm.

From:

stardreamer

Riffing off the second prompt -- what kind of power might result from a mass sting attack? Would it be different depending on the kind of insect -- bees, wasps, fire ants?

From:

ysabetwordsmith

See below for "Berettaflies."

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Your wasp prompt contributed to the free-verse poem "Berettaflies." Facet goes out on a call to investigate complaints about venomous butterflies. Not even his insect powers are really up to the challenge at hand.

102 lines, Buy It Now = $51

From:

chordatesrock

The first really interesting association I made with the theme "anything goes" is "it's such a shame I prompted for Loki a few fishbowls ago, seeing as how it'd be nice to use that prompt now..." and I suppose actually there isn't any rule against reusing a prompt, is there?

From:

ysabetwordsmith

From this I got the free-verse poem "If Old Hymns You Like." It's an exploration of how badly people speak of Loki, and what the words really mean if you look a little closer.

45 lines, Buy It Now = $20

From:

shiori_makiba

Here are some I just thought of:

1) In Polychrome Heroics, preferably in Stalwart Stan & Antimatter, use the trope Bruce Wayne Held Hostage. Your choice on which of them is the hostage, why, and how. And how they get free (powers, rescued, the person doing it is delightfully amateur and really not cut out for the super-villain thing).

2) Heart is a Awesome Power. Polychrome Heroics.

3) Comes Great Responsibility - Superman being Superman.

4) Badass Normal - Do not mess with Phil Coulson or his team.

From:

lone_cat

Re 1) I can see it... amateur would-be-supervillain takes Stan hostage; Stan (being Stan) tries to persuade WBSV to get out of villaining.

Hmmm.... this leads to another question. Does Stan's family know or suspect that either Stan or Lawrence is a soup?

From:

shiori_makiba

I know right - he totally would.^_^

I'm not entirely positive if the Woods know - there was comments to one of the poems (What We Call Chaos) that makes me think maybe. But we can trust that either Ysabet knows or can get a straight answer out of Stan. ;)

From:

lone_cat

I can see one possible outcome as WBSV saying "Argh! Enough! Just go already!"

From:

stardreamer

Heh. "The Ransom of Red Chief"?

From:

lone_cat

Yeah, that was on my mind.

From:

lone_cat

It just occurred to me that another way to go with a hostage situation would be as a way to introduce Gabble.

From:

shiori_makiba

Re: Superpowers in the know?

Reading "What I Love About Games" - I leaning more toward they know about Stan. I doubt they know about Lawrence. Out right know that is - Stan's parents seem pretty on the ball so they might have thoughts and are waiting for him to tell them himself.

(edit: typo and missing word)

Edited Date: 2015-07-22 05:05 am (UTC)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

The whole hostage discussion kind of rolled into "With Your Brain and Your Resourcefulness." Lawrence discovers that getting kidnapped is not nearly as much fun as kidnapping someone else, and then Stan gets dragged into the whole mess, and the new girl in town realizes that she has bitten off way more than she can chew.

478 lines, Buy It Now = $239

From:

shiori_makiba

^_^

Sounds like fun.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I really enjoyed writing this one. It has some silly, fluffy parts and others that get darker and more serious. You'll get to see a copy, I'm working on sendsoffs tonight.

From:

moongoddessgirl

I would love to see anything with Danso and family or Love is for children. Especially with cooking and childhood favorites or family recipes.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

This inspired the free-verse poem "Where We Love Is Home." Amada and her boys find a new house in Hannah's neighborhood.

142 lines, Buy It Now = $71

From:

zeeth_kyrah

A few obscure dieties get together and make a nation.

Re: anything goes: What counts as a vehicle?
("Anything can fly if you add enough thrust.")

The joy of discovering a whole new way to communicate.

Edit: and boosted at DW and LJ.

Edited (added boost links) Date: 2015-07-22 02:16 am (UTC)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Your communication prompt combined with a LJ prompt to inspired the free-verse poem "Hearing What Isn't Said." A quiet evening jog turns into more excitement than Ansel bargained for when a teenager bumps into him -- and then disappears.

426 lines, Buy It Now = $213
Available for posting after "Coloring In" has been sponsored and published.

From:

dialecticdreamer

I'd like to see something with some of your lesser-known Polychrome characters-- Oh, and just to be fun, throw in an update on the Merry Wren and its regulars, a year after independence? Who's new to the area?

From:

lone_cat

mmm.... Just re-read those; it would be interesting to get glimpses of how they're handling the whole "We won! We won! ... now what?" question.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

From this I got the free-verse poem "Come Through Your Door." The vote for gay marriage makes Dylan think about the changes happening in Ireland. Then a couple of newly engaged men come into his bar, and things get a little tense ...

138 lines, Buy It Now = $69

From:

dialecticdreamer

OOh, I want to read this. You don't usually open anything so short for multiple sponsors, do you?

From:

ysabetwordsmith

"OOh, I want to read this."

You'll get to, because prompters get a backchannel copy.

"You don't usually open anything so short for multiple sponsors, do you?"

Sure, it's epic length. Below epic, I discourage but don't forbid partial funding. (It's fine if people arrange cosponsors though, which has happened a few times.) The only catch is we currently have three open epics, two of them in Polychrome Heroics. I'd rather clear out some of that before opening a new epic.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I came across some other inspiration elsenet and figured it would attach well here. "Collarboned" is about empathic abuse, and it's also a sequel to "Touching the Ties That Bind."

70 lines, Buy It Now = $35

From:

stardreamer

There's a loose end in the Damask thread with Dan the ice-cream man. Now that Damask has come out to Mallory, maybe it's time for that to be revisited.

How is Larriken doing? I was thinking about him earlier today.

Has any progress been made on finding and neutralizing the clipper who hurt Cassandra? (Yes indeed, "neutralizing" is a loaded word.)

I'd like to see a conversation between Mr. Marshall and Ms. Fischer about making the school a safer place for students with soup abilities. What/who are they up against, and what kind of strategy will they adopt?

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Regarding clippers: I know that there are several active, not many, but more than one or two. I also know that, as with the back-alley abortionists who inspired them, they come in different flavors, including but not necessarily limited to:

* The ones who actually know what they are doing, do a competent job of it, and are working to help people that nobody else can or will. (Remember, superdisempowers can be fatal, and some superpowers are just more trouble than they're worth.)

* The ones who believe that they are helping, but aren't as skilled as they think and don't really understand how little is known about superpowers period, which means that sometimes they do a lot of collateral damage without realizing it. They would probably be horrified to discover how much they have hurt people.

* The ones who know damn well what kind of damage they're doing, and either don't care, or take malicious pleasure in it. Some are just in it for the money. Some are sporks who hate themselves and other soups and wish it would all just go the hell away, but they can't dig out their own ability.

Now which of those latter two -- or something else -- do you think would make a more interesting example as part of Cassandra's story?

From:

stardreamer

I have always thought that the clipper who hurt Cassandra was a close analog to an "I can cure your gay child" type, because that's the sort of person her parents would have chosen. They consider what they are doing to be a holy calling, they don't care whether the "patient" consents or not*, and any damage they do is regrettable but necessary in the greater service of saving a soul. If they are self-aware enough to realize that it takes a super-power to do what they do, they either consider it "perverting the Devil's power to good" or are of the "God has given ME this particular ability for a reason" persuasion.

You don't have to use that portrait if there's another option you like better. But it seems to me to be the best fit from what Cassandra has said about her home life.

* Of course they will accept adult patients who come of their own will, and there will be some of those. But their bread-and-butter is from children, consenting or not, who are handed over by their parents.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Your clipper prompt inspired the free-verse poem "Neither Automatic Nor Inevitable." Cassandra gets a chance to face the man who ripped away her power of Flight. The path to justice is not easy, though.

454 lines, Buy It Now = $227

From:

ysabetwordsmith

*goflopnow*

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