Poetry, Flash, and Pikes Peak
It’s April, and a writer’s fancy turns to poetry, and the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. Poetry first, since that started today. If you loved Nanowrimo (which I did), you may also want to take on the Poem a Day challenge at Robert Lee Brewer’s blog at the Writer’s Digest site: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/CategoryView,category,Poetry%20Challenge%202009.aspx
Robert provides a prompt each day, and poets can post their poems in the comments area. Since one of my friends has recently adopted a poem-a-day practice with wonderful results, I thought this would be a great way to try it for a month. I always love writing to prompts, and the incentives offered through the PAD challenge make it even more fun.
But when I’m not thinking about poems, I’m thinking about Pikes Peak. This will be my twelfth time attending the conference, which makes me one of the old-timers. Every year I get something new out of the conference. Last year, I had the enormous fun of learning about flash fiction from Bret Wright, and then of winning the on-site flash fiction contest with this story, for which the prompt was “They said it couldn’t be done”:
Mona’s First Thanksgiving
Fifteen people invited for Thanksgiving. Mona’s white apron, perfectly pressed. Pies finished yesterday, bread baked. Turkey in the oven.
Mona gloats. They said it couldn’t be done, but Mona is confident in her housewifely skills.
The house is clean, the Wedgwood china sparkling.
Guests arrive, find their seats. Mona brings the food to the table. Father lifts the knife to carve the turkey.
The knife stops on ice.
Mona forgot to defrost.
This year, I’ll get to celebrate making the finals in the YA category of the Pikes Peak Writing Contest, with my story Drift Bones. (It’s the sequel to Bone Temple.) Plus there’s a new Thursday session, so I can enjoy the conference for a whole extra day. And the usual line-up of fantastic writers, editors, and agents coming to share their knowledge. And the parties. We’ll see if we can party quietly enough this year not to get busted by the fun police. Hah.
I hope to see you there.