The Wordsmith's Forge

The May 2013 Crowdfunding Creative Jam is now open on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. The theme is "magic." Come give us prompts, or claim prompts for your own inspiration!


What I Have Written

"Cimaruta" -- 61 lines, $30.50 (Fiorenza the Wisewoman)
A prompt about plant magic led to the free-verse poem "Cimaruta." Fiorenza the Wisewoman needs to banish the evil eye from her village.

"Liminal Gifts" -- 31 lines, $15 
The prompt about innovation led to the free-verse poem "Liminal Gifts." It explores the rise of technomancy.

"The Ballad of Zaavan's Revenge" -- FREE (A Conflagration of Dragons)
A blue dragon destroys a city on the prairie.

"Mask of the White Demon" -- not for sale yet (Kande's Quest)
Kande helps a shaman create an enchanted mask.


From My Prompts

"Conjuring a Rainbow" by sharpeningthebones -- a lovely ficlet about making magic.

"A Spell of Smoke and Notions" by elizabethconall -- a poem about magical fabric.

"On Choosing a Diviner" by siege -- a thoughtful piece of nonfiction about finding the right magical practitioner.

The May 2013 Muse Fusion is open over on Torn World.  We're looking for prompts about sea monsters, but other ideas are welcome too.  Come leave or claim prompts, or just enjoy the goodies.


What I Have Written

"Installing the Unicorn" -- this session's freebie is a poem about a new aquarium.


From My Prompts

ellenmillion has drawn an awesome picture of a heat-thief eating a young deathfin.  These are two related species of Torn World sea monsters.  They don't ordinarily live together, but individuals may travel outside the usual ranges.

This month's theme was "homonyms, puns, and wordplay." I worked from 1 PM to midnight, so about 9 hours allowing for lunch and supper breaks. There were a few prompts early on, a trickle later, but far less than usual. I only wrote 13 poems.

Participation was so low, I actually didn't write enough to activate all the perks, although people could've covered those with general donations. Remember, it takes prompts to make the fishbowl work. I got some extra activity by doubling up on people who sent multiples, but there's a limit to how well that works.

I've had fishbowls tank before; it happens once or twice a year. I suspect it was due to the theme. It was popular in the poll but then people didn't prompt much; they may have found the topic hard to work with. I kind of expected it to be a challenge for me but was willing to give it a try. Sometimes those kinds of themes have turned out really well. But after this, I'm likely to be more selective about what goes into a poll or what I accept from the voting results, and weed out themes that I think might be harder to work with.

Most of the poems were free verse. Some used single prompts while others stacked a bunch together. I finished out the Rainbowfic Sunlight list. Length ran shorter this time: a lot of medium, some short and long, only three epics.

Activity was low. There were 41 comments on LiveJournal and none on Dreamwidth. A total of 11 people sent prompts. There were no new prompters or donors.


Read some poetry!
The following poems from the February 2013 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"Balance and Tangle"
"Command Line Errors"
"The Geometry of Language"
"Greetings and Solicitations"
"Irony of Eight" (One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis)
"Ohm's Lawyers"
"Portmanteaparty"
"Spathic Personalities"
"Tantalizing"
"That Is the Question"
"Whole Loops"
"Won True Way" (An Army of One)

"The Voyage to Vaucouleurs" (11/6/12, The Arc of Joan)
"Scotch Hobby" (12/4/12, The Steamsmith)


Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, read the list of unsold poems from May. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available. The linkback poem "The Voyage to Vaucouleurs" (The Arc of Joan) currently has 12 of 16 verses posted. You can reveal more by linking to the unsold poetry post, or to your favorite poems from this fishbowl.

All currently sponsored poems have been posted. Per the $200 goal, "Scotch Hobby" is the free epic. The other perks did not activate this month. We do have a carryover from previous activity, however. There will be a half-price sale running May 20-26. I'm doing something a little different this time, offering the unsold stuff from the Rainbowfic Vellum list, which consists of 9 poems and 1 short story, spanning several different series.

Donors this month include: LiveJournal users Laffingkat, Zianuray, rix_scaedu, janetmiles, and technoshaman. The donor perk-post is "Wordplay."


The Poetry Fishbowl project also has a permanent landing page.

The list of unsold poems has been posted, with prices and thumbnail descriptions.

This project features some autistic students seeking to use their creative and computer technical skills to make some money to live on, because they're not well suited to most typical jobs.  I'm in favor of people playing to their strengths and using creative problem-solving instead of trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED.  Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open!  Today's theme is "homonyms, puns, and wordplay."  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.

Watch for the linkbacks perk to go live.  Click to read "The Voyage to Vaucouleurs" (The Arc of Joan).


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 "homonyms, puns, and wordplay."  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 new feature in conjunction with fishbowl sponsorship is this progress meter showing the amount donated.  There are multiple perks, the top one being a half-price poetry sale on one series when donations reach $300.



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.

Linkback perk: I have a spare series poem available, and each linkback will reveal a verse of the poem.  One person can do multiple links if they're on different services, like Dreamwidth or Twitter, rather than all on LiveJournal.  "The Voyage to Vaucouleurs" belongs to the series The Arc of Joan and has 16 verses.
 

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.

5) If donations total $100 by Friday evening then you get a free $15 poem; $150 gets you a free $20 poem; and $200 gets you a free epic, posted after the Poetry Fishbowl.  These will usually be series poems if I have them; otherwise I may offer non-series poems or series poems in a different size.  If donations reach $250, you get one step toward a bonus fishbowl; three of these activates the perk, and they don't have to be three months in a row.  Everyone will get to vote on which series, and give prompts during the extra fishbowl, although it may be a half-day rather than a whole day.  If donations reach $300, you get a piece of bonus material. 


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 "homonyms, puns, and wordplay."  I'll be soliciting ideas for people who play with words, locations related to language or literature, word-based plot twists, homonyms, puns, portmanteus, other bits of linguistic humor, and poetic forms in particular.  But anything is welcome, really. 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, and additional perks at $100-$300 in donations.  Linkbacks reveal verses of "The Voyage to Vaucouleurs.") The rest of the poems will go into my archive for magazine submission.

ellenmillion is doing a set of sea monster ACEO cards.  This is part of Sea Monster Month over on Torn World.  Donation perks include random prints of the cards, a complete set of the prints, or an original ACEO card.  There are some collective perks too.

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, May 7 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "homonyms, puns, and wordplay." I'll be soliciting ideas for people who play with words, locations related to language or literature, word-based plot twists, homonyms, puns, portmanteus, other bits of linguistic humor, and poetic forms in particular.

I have a linkback poem, "The Voyage to Vaucouleurs" (The Arc of Joan).

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week.  (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts.)  Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog. 

( New to the fishbowl?  Read all about it! )

"Squiggles: Excerpts from Nleimen's Journal"

1505.07.13

I want a hole mouse! They come in lilac. They're rare around here, though, and it's not lawful to keep or transport them because they are considered pests. They've spread pretty far from their native range, and people are trying to control them. So I can only have a hole mouse if I move to a city where they're already well established. I still want one!

I borrowed a book from the library to help with my essay. It had lots of articles on animals from different regions. The hole mouse is just my favorite. The chapter on diseases was pretty scary, though. You never know what might be lurking in some forgotten corner of the world.


See the landing page for "Squiggles: Excerpts from Nleimen's Journal."