Archive for the ‘Creating’ Category

Final challenge of NYCMidnight's Creative Writing Championship. Now down to 40 writers left, all with the same restrictions: "Genre: Fantasy, Location: car wash, Object: kitten." Stupidly I thought I'd pop in and watch the Emmys just long enough to see Dr. Horrible, ended up watching all of them and having only an hour left to polish my first draft. Damn you, maddeningly entertaining Neil Patrick Harris! Here's what I submitted.

The Kitten, the Flame Demon, and the Car Wash
by C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

Jess watched from the car wash lobby as the screaming flame demon roamed the streets. It wasn’t charging yet, but it was definitely rampaging in their general direction.

“The heat is on, ladies,” she said. “Maybe this can happen faster?”

“Gimme a second, OK?” Amanda said, before turning back to kneel in front of the weary young girl they’d rescued the day before. She was maybe 7 years old, but her eyes now belonged to a very old, very tired woman.

They had found her in an abandoned mall surrounded by roaring flames and smoldering bodies. She didn’t respond to them, wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. She’d been utterly silent and listless since they brought her back, as if she knew she was already dead and was vaguely wondering when she would fall over. “Honey?” Amanda asked her gently. “I need you to listen to me.”

There was an explosion. “Just torched the McDonalds,” Jess called.

“That thing, that fire thing that attacked your… that you saw? It’s coming this way. No, no, hold on,” she said soothingly as the girl stiffened. “We can stop it, but we need your help. Do you know where those horrible things came from?”

A pause, and then the girl shook her head.

“Do you know what magic is? Casting spells?”

A nod.

“Well, some very foolish people thought they could teach a computer to do magic. They thought they could program it with all the spells, the knowledge and the rituals of thousands of years, and then push a button. Do you think that was a good idea?”

The girl looked out at the angry towers of smoke rising from all around the city and shook her head violently.

“That’s right. They learned how to do magic, but didn't understand that power without wisdom is dangerous. Last year they accidentally called up a host of demons, and we’ve been fighting them ever since.”

“The boutique’s gone now,” Jess yelled. “If we’re gonna do this, we need to do it now!”
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Second round, challenge three of NYCMidnight's Creative Writing Championship. New writing group, new restrictions. Mine were: "Genre: Romantic comedy, Location: arcade, Object: coffee pot." And we're off…

The Final Score
By C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

Being a coffee shop barista, even an emergency temp one, was everything Aly thought it would be. “Here you are sir, have a nice day, die in a fire,” she muttered before turning to her mother, who was filling the large catering pot. “How do you keep from murdering your customers?”

“That gets you talked about,” her mother said. “Try making terrifying designs in their latte cream instead, that always cheers me up.”

Aly sighed. Helping out her mom was one thing, but she couldn’t take being back in this town for long. At least she didn’t have to go near—

“You know where Electricland Arcade is, right?” her mother asked suddenly. “I need you to run a delivery… Aly? Why are you hitting your head?”

—

Matt stood ready, his hands dry, his shoulders loose, a retired gunslinger here for one last battle. Looming in front of him was his old archenemy.

“So, Donkey Kong,” he said grimly. “We meet again.”
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NaNoWriMo 2009 badges are out!

OK, yes, granted it's still a few months till November when National Novel Writing Month attacks, but they couldn't wait and frankly I can use the nudging to get ready. I started strong in my first NaNoWriMos but my performance the last few years has been sad.

Getting psyched already…

Well, it is a review, but mostly it was a contest entry for McSweeney's recent columnist contest. I didn't win so you get it as a blog entry. Here's what I submitted:

Life Lessons, by C. A. Bridges

My columns, should you choose to accept them, would be a variety of subjects with the common thread being the real life lessons I take away. Example:

Review: “The Graveyard Book,” by Neil Gaiman

Ordinarily one might think I have no reason to read a children’s book, as I am no longer a child and frankly wasn’t much of one to begin with. But there are lessons to be learned from all books great and small, and I loathe missing the chance for enrichment in any form.

This particular form is currently garnering all the praise it can get. Hordes of critics, writers’ organizations and librarians, working in shifts, have been feverishly devising new awards to quickly bestow upon this lively (ha!) tale of a small, recently orphaned boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard. Morbid as the subject may be, the lessons the boy garners are valuable ones indeed. Lessons of bravery, common sense and deduction, stories of responsibility and valor. Lessons valuable enough, in fact, that even after only a few short chapters I judged them worthy enough to be passed to all children.

I started small, with a nephew.

Jimbo, as he was unfortunately known, was a particularly sticky and noisome boy, with an equally annoying family (sorry, sis). My intended program of involuntary personal growth could only benefit him. But I decided, upon reflection, that it would be unnecessarily cruel to actually murder his parents, as well as being too much work. Instead I offered to feed and water him for a weekend so that his newly emancipated mother and father might enjoy the bliss of a quiet house, and then, once he was in my clutches, I merely informed him that he was now an orphan.

I had been concerned that the lack of physical violence in his presence might fail to suitably traumatize him for my purposes but as it turned out, detailed, step-by-step description of his parents’ fictional, horrendous demise was quite enough, especially when I added the appropriate gestures and sound effects. This was an excellent sign! A traumatized child is a child ready to learn. It was off to the graveyard!
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Second challenge, round one, of NYCMidnight's Creative Writing Championship. This time my group was given "Genre: Fantasy, Location: Travel Agency, Object: Lobster." Well, that seemed pretty obvious…

"TransmogriVacations, Inc."

by C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

“A lobster? An actual crawling around, dunk it in butter lobster?”

“It’s what we have available right now in your price range, sir. Lobster, beetle, or vulture. Live your dream, sir.”

“What kind of beetle?”

“Dung.”

Parkleman sighed and slumped in the chair. “I’m in accounting,” he muttered, looking around the travel agency. “Dealing with balls of crap ten times my size is precisely what I’m trying to get away from.”

The sign over the door read “TRANSMOGRIVACATIONS, INC.” and in smaller script underneath: “BE ALL SOMETHING ELSE CAN BE.” There was an enchanted logo next to it depicting a cartoon man changing into a lion, a dolphin, an eagle, and then a man again, over and over. Parkleman stared at it for a long moment.

“You can really change me into anything I want to be?” he asked again.

The mage behind the desk raised an eyebrow.

“Anything I can afford, I mean?” Read the rest of this entry »

The West Port Book Festival is hosting their first Literary Twestival in Edinburgh on August 14th. But you don't have to be within a thousand miles of the place to participate…

Just post your short-short-short story to your Twitter account and include the hashtag #wpss (for West Port Short Story). The best will be presented ay the Festival, as people on site are invited to create their own on the spot. Or submit a Collective Noun for their approval (such as "A wunch of bankers," " ______ of mime artists,"A whorde of prostitutes," etc).

No prizes (that I know of), just the fun of stretching your mind in a little tiny space. And check out the ones already submitted here.

And here's my first entry into the 2009 Creative Writing Championship short story contest. Each group of writers was given a genre, a location that must be integral, an item that must be featured, 1,000 words to do it in, and 48 hours to write it. My group received "Suspense / indoor swimming pool / piggy bank." Fair enough…

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Put Not Your Trust in Banks

by C. A. Bridges

He heard the terrible crashing sound, and the screams, and the rapidly approaching clatter.

Nestled deep in the darkness, the old stagecoach breathed a deep sigh and waited for the inevitable, which arrived moments later in a sudden slice of harsh white light.

“C-coach?” came the voice, sweet, high and shaking.

“Go away.”

The pig pushed her way into the closet and past the luggage to find him. “Coach! You have to help us!” She spun around to look behind her, making a noise like… there is no noise quite like a full piggy bank. She sloshed, metallically.

“It’s Christmas time, this is what happens,” he grumbled, and began to roll backwards to hide behind the shoes. “I’d advise closing your eyes. It’ll be over faster.”

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I won the audience award! You like me! (sniff) You were shamed, guilted, and/or pressured into admitting you really like me!

Thanks, everyone, for voting for me.

Didn't get the judges' prize but I did get into the top ten, which means I also won entry into NYCMidnight's 2009 Creative Writing Contest, which starts this Friday night. Forget Father's Day, kids, daddy has to get his write on.

The new contest is a bit different, and only slightly less complicated than a March Madness betting chart made with a Spirograph. It works on a points system.

Once again I'll be in one of several writer groups. Starting this Friday night, we'll be given a location that must be featured, an item that must be included, and a specific genre, and we'll have 2 days to write a 1,000 word short story.

The judges will read them all, put them in order of preference and award points for our placement (#1 gets 25, #2 gets 22, etc). We get more locations, items, and genres and we write another 1,000 word story in July. Our points get added together, and the top 10 writers in each group move on to the next round.

We get reassigned to new groups, do it all over again in August, and the top ten from each group gets points but only five writers from each group move to the next round, based on the top three stories along with the next two highest point-total writers.

The last round is in September, all the writers left get a location, an object that must be in the story, and a genre. The judges choose the best 15, points get assigned, and then a variety of prizes get awarded to the top writers and the top points-holders. More details here.

Got all that? Me, neither. I plan to just write whenever they tell me to and see what happens. The prizes are decent, the challenge is a fun one, we get critiques on everything we write, and we get our own forum to tear each other apart help each other out.

I'll keep you posted, whether you like it or not, and continue posting my stories here. So, heads up.

Remember NYCMidnight's "Tweet Me a Story" contest? Hundreds of writers wrote stories of 140 characters or less, using a supplied word? And then some of the writers made it to the final round, and we all got the same word? And I posted my entries here?

One of them made the top 25, chosen by NYCMidnight's judges, and now the final vote begins. So I'm shamelessly asking for votes.

Head to http://www.nycmidnight.com/2009/tweet/tweet.htm and vote for me (if you feel my story deserves it, of course). You can also vote for any other of the entries you like. No registration required, no e-mail, nothing. Mine's the 4th one down:

"Aren't you skydiving?" "Yup." "You're calling from midair? That's sweet!" "I love you…" he said, watching the tear in the fabric spread. CREATED BY Chris Bridges

Voting ends Wednesday, 9pm EST. Thanks!

So, I made the final round of NYCMidnight's "Tweet Me a Story" contest. So, the remaining writers all got the same word last night to use in our 140-character stories. So, the word was "tear."

Here's what I submitted, with titles added afterward for fun:

Last Call

"Aren't you skydiving?"

"Yup."

"You're calling from midair? That's sweet!"

"I love you…" he said, watching the tear in the fabric spread.

Father Knows Best

"But I loved him, daddy!"

"Wipe that tear away, honey. Other boys will respect you more."

"How do you know?"

"Because they'll see his body."

Anything for You

"You said you were too happy to write tear jerking songs?"

"Yeah?"

"I just stole your truck to go sleep with your sister."

"Oh, I love you!"

Interestingly, all of them are about love, one way or another. Noticed that after I submitted them. Here's what I didn't submit, and why.

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