Sunday, October 3, 2010

A picture is worth 100 words?

Jenny Matlock

For this week's Saturday Centus we were provided a picture instead of a sentence as a prompt. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but still we are only allowed 100, none of which can be curse words or, as much as we want to use it, rutabaga. Check the Saturday Centus to read all the different stories that can come from one picture and a 100 thoughtfully scrutinized words. It's amazing.

Here is the picture posted as the prompt:





I know what you're thinking. Everyone is going to write about the same thing. How can you look at this picture and not write about the Spanish inquisition? I fought really hard to resist and came up with this story I've titled A Horrifying First Halloween. 

A Horrifying First Halloween
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was always talk in the orphanage of Halloween, but dreams of being a witch, ghost, or Elvis, were crushed by the Head Mistress. 


October 5th, my day finally came. I was adopted! By a nice family too, with a nine year old and a dog. 


But happily ever after failed me. One night, as we sat happily around the table, the son charged me with a knife. He scalped me. Gutted my insides. And for extra measure, the morbid boy carved a smile into my face. 


This was Halloween?! I have to warn the others at the pumpkin patch!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


~Lissa

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Why be careful what you wish for?

Jenny Matlock
Same dealio as usual. I'm linking up to Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus in which every week we are provided a prompt to use and must create a story using the prompt (completely as is) and up to 100 more words from our own minds. 


The prompt this week is: He never dreamed when he blew the candles out on his cake...


I've titled my entry, Wish Granted
The prompt is used in bold. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wish Granted

Collin was happy. Not because it was his 13th birthday, because he knew this would be the year Molly would become his girlfriend. Over his cake, he spotted her; her eyes sparkling in the sunlight, her hair dancing in the wind before softly landing on her Twilight t-shirt. He took a deep breath, and made his wish. 

He never dreamed when he blew the candles out on his cake, that it would be his last breath. Well, human breath anyway. As the smoke dissipated so did Collin's skin color. Transformed and with a sudden self-confidence, he flashed Molly his new pearly fangs, and confessed his love. Her response?

"Sorry, I'm Team Jacob."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


~Lissa

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Does this even make sense?

Jenny Matlock


Never has a 100 words seemed as hard it did this week. Too much story and needed character background made this Centus pushing upwards of almost 200 words. With each painful delete not only did I feel the story losing its charm but also it's comprehension. With a lot of reworking it was finally widdled down to 100 with a small bit of everything I wanted say. But now I'm left saying, does this even make sense? Hopefully everything came through, but I'll let you be the judge. 

Below is my Centus this week. The prompt was: "This is never going to come out," she thought as she scrubbed at the spot on the worn carpet.

Same rules apply as usual. No pictures, no vulgarity, the prompt must be used as is, in it's entirety, and your story should not be over 100 words (excluding the word count of the prompt.)

I've titled my Centus, Best. Day. EVER. and the prompt is used in bold. 

-------------------------------------------
Best. Day. EVER.
I sat silently below on the antique rug, teased by the steak precariously balancing on Eloise's rattling fork. Barbeque, sweating off. 

"Not experienced enough?!... I RAN the company before I got pregnant!" shouted Eloise.

"We have a certain image to uphold Sis, and well...look at you..." Emma scoffed walking into another part of her picture perfect house. 

Eloise defiantly dumped her plate, delivering me the steak!

Heaven sent, I devoured every bite, but the barbeque left a brown stain behind.

Eloise snickered. "This is never going to come out," she thought as she scrubbed at the spot on the worn carpet. Pushing it deeper. Sure, I'd be blamed for the stain, but for that moment, we were both happy. 

------------------------------------------------------------

~Lissa

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Have you forgotten?

Jenny Matlock


This week's prompt for the Saturday Centus is, as I saw it, and most others, in tribute to September 11th. 9 years later, the act, and breadth of pain it caused, are still unimaginable and unexplainable. 

Never Forget

The prompt is: I stood frozen in front of the flickering images on my TV. 

Same rules apply as usual. You must use the prompt as is, and your story should be 100 words or less, not including the prompt. This week however, we are allowed to post one picture. 

My entry is below, with the prompt used in bold. It's titled, How Can I Forget?.

-----------------------------------------------

How Can I Forget?

Every time my eyes close the nightmare returns. I can smell the dust of death and debris, feel the smoke burning my eyes, and hear the chaotic screams of pure horror and agonizing sorrow. After 9 years, I expected footage of that fateful day to replay on my TV as customary. I wasn't expecting to see home videos of my sister and I, and my mother crippling in anguish below them. 

As the sounds of our childhood laughter echoed, I stood frozen in front of the flickering images on my TV. My sister enlisted in the army after the attacks. She fought in Iraq and died in combat. 9/11's death count continues...

--------------------------------------------------------





This was fictional but I did want to aim my Centus to remind us to not only pay tribute to those who died that day, but also all who died as a result. May 9/11's death toll end soon. 

~Lissa

Friday, September 10, 2010

Do you accept make up homework?

Jenny Matlock

So, I've been pretty bad at this. I've missed the last two Saturday Centuses (Centus'? Centus's? How do you make it plural?). For one reason or another I haven't been able to show up for Saturday morning's "class." Rather than claim illness, as I did in kindergarten to get out of tying my shoes in front of the entire class when I didn't know how to and was PERFECTLY content with the idea of velcro shoes for the rest of my life, I will just come clean and say, I just never got around to it. I was busy, and probably not busier than any of you are, but I just never got around to it. So, as this week is about to end, my procrastination has finally come to smack me in the face and tell me we are through. 


Two assignments passed, and one more almost gone, I've come up with a crazy solution to make me feel as if I haven't missed anything. I'm going to do them all, and do them all in one, without ever breaking the rules. 

What this means is, I will be participating in this weeks Saturday Centus, and simultaneously, be participating in the past two weeks as well. 

This weeks prompt (week 18) was: It was a dark and scary night.
That will be included in my story, unaltered and in bold. 

Last week's prompt (week 17) was: Take any SC story, yours or someone elses, and write another 100 words to tell us the rest of the story.
So I've chosen my first SC entry from week 12, Starting Over Again, which I will repost below in italics, and will continue the story and tie it in with "It was a dark and stormy night". 

And lastly, The week before THAT (week 16): Write about your summer vacation, fact or fiction, exactly 100 words, written in first person, with the title What I did over Summer Vacation
Which means, I will title it, What I did over Summer Vacation, and position the entire story to fit the title and be in first person. 

Whew.

Here we go. My make up work. I'll report early to class tomorrow.

------------------------
What I did over Summer Vacation

There's no need to be nervous. Right?

With each passing mile the nerves become harder to ignore. 

"Everything'll be fine." I say as I glance at Charles in the passengers seat, wrapped tightly in a blanket. 

But of course, he doesn't respond. Huh, I guess nothing's really changed. 

Driving six hours is a long time on the road. Six hours spent singing car-oake and taking in the picturesque scenery, but mostly reminiscing about the good times. But those days were long gone and my mind was in a different place now. Or was it?

My pulse quickened as I passed the road sign which read, "Medford 27 miles."

An insignificant swamp town of 400, to most Medford isn't worth opening your eyelids for. To me, it means a chance at a new life. 

It'll all be over soon. 

I smile. 

"Like swamps Charlie?" I poke his lifeless body. "Good! That's where you'll meet the last guy who cheated on me."

I turn back to the road. 

15 more miles, speeding, my mind drifts.

It was a dark and stormy night.  

His hot cocoa -cold, the fire -burnt out. I was tired of waiting. 

In the rain, I looked for him. 

He was with her, cuddling in a cafe, "working late."

When he came home I kissed him passionately with my shovel. Three times. 

Blinding blue and red lights snap me back to the present. 

The siren fades, drowned out by my heartbeat. 

I pull over. 

Frozen. 

I didn't want to spend my summer this way. 

My hand slithers down and grips the shotgun by my feet. 

Click.


----------------------------


~Lissa

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Where is the Saturday Centus?

Jenny Matlock


So this week I was so pumped and ready for a new Centus to jumpstart my creative juices. I woke up early for work on Saturday morning to check and see what the new prompt was that would somehow inspire so many great stories. I had planned on reading the prompt in the morning before work to give myself something to think about throughout the day.


Normally, I spend my workdays wandering around asking people if they need help finding anything and pondering why parents buy the screeching toys for their kids that have already annoyed them in just the few minutes they've been in the store.


Or I see things like this -





a remote controlled cooler, and think. Only in America.
Only in America would people be hanging out drinking, and all be so lazy that none of them wants to get up to get more beer, and instead would rather invest fifty bucks in paying for a cooler that, by remote control, can bring beers directly to them. Will we ever need to get off the couch again?


Or I imagine things like this -



when I look at the cardboard cut-outs we have on display.

Or try to guess what customer might actually buy this-




I thought it would be much more productive to spend my time thinking of what to do with the prompt rather than all of these. So I clicked on the Saturday Centus link and saw the same Centus as last week. It hadn't been updated. It was still early in the morning, so I thought, well maybe she hasn't gotten around to posting it.


After a few hours of boredom interspersed with girls screaming about the Edward Cullen dolls with built in glitter, the long debates over which Silly Bandz to buy, and explaining to customers how we are not racist just because we don't happen to have your country represented in our World Cup merchandise, it was my lunch break.


I used the internet on my phone to see if maybe the prompt was posted now, give myself some sort of purpose and mission for the next few hours, but once again, the link took me to the old Centus. Huh? Well I'll just keep waiting.


When I got home, I clicked my Centus button and no... Still no new prompt. Was my link wrong? I clicked on the Saturday Centus link off of Jenny's blog just to be sure. Still "Objects in the Mirror.." Alright, well I'll just check tomorrow morning. Save it to ponder about at work tomorrow.


The next morning, (today) same issue. Hmmm...lunch break. Still no. I clicked the comments button to see if anyone had said anything about there not being a new prompt this week. No one mentioned a thing. Was something wrong with Jenny?! My mind went into worry mode.


When I got home from work I decided to go a different route, and went to Jenny's page directly. Made the html as simple as possible. I saw the post made by Mr. Jenny, so surely everything was fine. But why was there no Centus? I kept scrolling...


Ah! There it was. It HAD been posted Saturday morning. And already 26 of you had not only seen the prompt but already submitted! I was very behind to say the least, but excited to finally start.


The prompt this week is: "I listened to them from my perch on the top step and didn't know whether to laugh or to cry."


My take that came out of it I've titled, The Old Family Tree. The prompt is used in bold.


------------------------------------------------------


The Old Family Tree


Like a tree, the lines on his face told his age. Rooted to the same spot on the porch for 50 years, he took in the sunrise.


Peaceful...then.


"Don't leave without saying bye to your Grandpa boy." He grumbled.


The boy bounding off the porch stopped. Embarrassed.


"Uh bye, Grandpa."


"That's better.  Now pull your pants up! People should know you, not your underwear."


The boy obliged then continued walking.


"Billy! Sit, I need to tell you a story." He always had stories.


"But I-"


"During WWII the..."


I listened to them from my perch on the top step and didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. 


That wasn't Billy. He was talking to the newspaper boy, Enrique.




 -----------------------------------

~Lissa 

(This has been part of the Saturday Centus hosted by Jenny Matlock at Off My Tangent.)

Friday, August 13, 2010

A comic strip?

So, I've been focusing more on developing my screenplay ideas rather than blogs since in September I'm starting a feature. Ahh! But short comics keep popping in my head, and with Paintbrush now installed on my computer, I've been itching to doodle. Now, with a few comics under my belt, I've decided to start posting them. 

It's a major contrast to my last post, but I thought it would be nice to post something short and light in between censuses. 

My first comic debut. 

Hope you enjoy.

-----------------------------------------------




  
















Titled: Flowhore

~Lissa

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Can someone invent sleep-blogging?

Jenny Matlock

It's Saturday Centus time!!

So I realize that posting once a week with just a Saturday Centus isn't exactly "posting with a vengeance" like I told myself I would. I have the stories in my head. I even have a few comics started. (Yes, that should be interesting). I just need the time! 

This is why sleep has become my biggest enemy (Not to be confused with Gravity, my Arch-nemesis). I never have been much of a fan of sleeping. I mean sure, in the morning, when I wake up and all my muscles have died and gone to heaven, then sleeping seems like pure ecstasy. Given the option though, I'd rather avoid the entire escapade. There are so few hours in a day, and so much I want to do in life, I think of sleep as the Devil stealing my life for 8 hours a day. 

After a few calculations, I have discovered that sleep has taken roughly 2,433 days of my mere 20 year life. Wow, see sleep = the Devil. I have tried to use sleeping time to my advantage by trying to lucid dream, and trying to dream up ideas for screenplays. So far no real luck. I'd love it if I could multi-task while sleeping. For instance, I envy sleepwalkers, and if they can sleepwalk to the gym and on the Treadmill without one moment of consciousness, then they are truly living (or is it sleeping?) the dream. All I can really do while sleeping is snore. 

Alas, this really has nothing to do with my Centus other than the fact that it is now 2 in the morning, and I'm trying to refuse sleep for a bit longer. Also, I'm probably rambling because there is no word limit and my fingers are celebrating their ability to dance freely. 

So, to re-focus, below is indeed my entry for the Saturday Centus   this week, hosted by Jenny Matlock at Off My Tangent. Same rules apply as always. You have a prompt you have to use in it's entirety, unaltered, and up to 100 words of your choosing to create a story. No pictures, no vulgarity, no praising Miley Cyrus.  

The prompt this week is:

"Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear."

In my Centus the prompt is in bold.  I call this Centus, Divorce: An Unfinished Road Trip
------------------------------------------
Divorce: An Unfinished Road Trip


They thought the drive would last forever. 

Their love, a 1998 Corvette, once the envy of everyone's eye, had battled mountains. Valleys. Sunrises. Sunsets. Now tired, worn, it struggled to drive. 

Paint chipped, seats torn, windshield mud-splattered. Neither passenger saw clearly, but neither admitted. 

He steered. She wanted a different path. 
She sang oldies. He needed something new. 

A pebble popped their tire. 

The engine revved one last time. The battery sputtered a last goodbye. They exited. 

Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear. They couldn't be farther apart. 

After 12 years,

on the side of the road, they left it. The shell of something once beautiful. 

--------------------------- 

~Lissa

Monday, August 2, 2010

Why do the lobsters have to die!?





Jenny Matlock


This Saturday Centus thing is cruel. This week, as I wrote my centus, my words transformed into lobsters. Yes, you heard read right, lobsters. With each word count check I found out some of my lobsters would have to go into the melting pot. And oh, oh would they scream and fight, begging to be one of the chosen ones. Begging to live forever on this page. But alas, my babies, my lobsters, had to be boiled down, to 100 words. Now, being a vegetarian, I can't really say much about the deliciousness of Lobster. I don't know. I've never had one. But maybe in my comment box, you can tell me how my lobsters taste. :)


This Saturday Centus is titled, Truth vs. Words
The prompt appears in bold.
--------------

Truth Vs. Words.

Once upon a time,
words were meaningless.
At least to poor Clara,
sweet Princess Penniless.

Happy endings were something else,
in her reality, far from fairytale land.
Never knowing kisses, she mastered taking
the burn from a smacking hand.

"I promise." meant nothing.
"I love you." a lie, used simply to pass time.
Men coming, going, stealing her heart,
never charged for the crime.

No! 

She wanted better. 

Deserved better.

Finally, her prince did arrive...

"I'll love you forever." He spoke absolute truth,
brushing hair from her face with the gentlest touch.
She teared up.
Words had power again.
And that's why it meant so much.




------------
This was part of the Saturday Centus hosted by Jenny Matlock at Off My Tangent.





Monday, July 26, 2010

Has it really been THAT long?

Wow, I went almost a complete year without posting anything. Even though I didn't really have a big blogsphere that I was abandoning, this revelation makes me nonetheless feel the need to come back and post with a vengeance. No writer's block will stand in my way anymore.


I would love to be able to post something at least once a week, and with the help of the Saturday Centus, hopefully I can.

Every Saturday Jenny Matlock at Off My Tangent will post a prompt and participating bloggers will have one week to use that prompt, completely unaltered, and form an original story around it. The catch is the story has to be no more that 100 words (excluding the prompt.) Born a rambler, I've been gifted with the ability to ramble on a topic such as the ethics of feeding a dog cat food, for ten pages without once seeming to have repeated myself. With the 100 word stigma, I couldn't repeat myself if I wanted to. A challenge to say the least.

The prompt this week was written by none other than my POPsicle, Sophisticated Lunacy, but he certainly didn't make it any easier. The prompt goes as follows:

Driving six hours is a long time on the road. Six hours spent singing car-aoke and taking in the picturesque scenery, but mostly reminiscing about the good times. But those days were long gone and my mind was in a different place now. Or was it? My pulse quickened as I passed the road sign which read "Medford 27 miles."

So as it is now 4:00 in the morning and I wasted far too many precious hours of sleep working on a blog template that didn't work, I'm going to cut the rambling and get on with it. My story. You'll see the prompt used in italics. Here it goes. I call it Starting Over Again.

--------------------------------------------------

Starting Over Again

There's no need to be nervous. Right?

With each passing mile the nerves become harder to ignore.

"Everything'll be fine." I say as I glance at Charles in the passengers seat, wrapped tightly in a blanket.

But of course, he doesn't respond. Huh, I guess nothing's really changed.

Driving six hours is a long time on the road. Six hours spent singing car-aoke and taking in the picturesque scenery, but mostly reminiscing about the good times. But those days were long gone and my mind was in a different place now. Or was it?

My pulse quickened as I passed the road sign which read "Medford 27 miles. "

An insignificant swamp town of 400, to most Medford isn't worth opening your eyelids for. To me, it means a chance at a new life.

It'll all be over soon.

I smile.

"Like swamps Charlie?" I poke his lifeless body. "Good! That's where you'll meet the last guy who cheated on me."