Wednesday Write-in #2

Welcome to the Wednesday Write-in!

This is the new feature on the blog which we’ll be running every week from now on to allow all of us writers to practice our skills, and get chatting to each other about our work.

Prompts

weak tea  ::  tight  ::  no reception  ::  sliding  ::  professional

Guidelines

There are no hard and fast rules, but here are some brief guidelines:

• You can use the prompts as inspiration or try to work them into your story somehow. Use as many as you want.
• When your story is done, post it online (your blog/twitter/in a comment here), tag with #wednesdaywritein and comment with a link so we can read it. You can write as many stories as you like.
• Please take the time to read and comment on as many other stories as you can.

Featured Story

We’ll feature our favourite story on the blog with a review of it and links to the author’s blog/twitter/facebook if relevant.

Posts will generally go up at 9am(ish) on Wednesday – stories are due by 9am Thursday (UK) to be considered for the featured story. You can keep posting your work after this, it just won’t be featured.

Rewards

We’ll keep track of who takes part in the write-ins, and you earn points for different things.

• Take part in a write-in = 1 point.
• Comment on other people’s stories = 1 point.
• Share/reblog this post = 1 point.

When you reach ten points the editing team will give detailed feedback on a story of your choice. This only counts for separate sessions—so if you write five stories for one write-in, that counts as one, and if you share on both facebook and twitter, that’s one. We might give an extra point if you comment on everyone’s stories, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Please look for us on Facebook or Twitter to keep up with the write-ins, or click the follow button to get blog updates!

Any questions? Otherwise, have fun writing!

Issue 5 deadline

Thank you to everyone who took part in the inaugural Wednesday Write-in, and a special thank you to those who told your friends! It proved even more popular than we’d hoped and we already can’t wait for next week.

In other news, there’s just a week left to submit stories for September’s magazine.

The optional theme this month is Lessons and the deadline is September 1st.

The issues will be published for the weekend of the 15th/16th, coinciding with CAKE’s editor Sarah Grace Logan attending Northampton’s first Gay Book Festival and also publishing a guest blog on Morgen Bailey‘s fascinating Writing Resource Blog! Busy weekend!

Featured writer #1

After some really tough deliberation, we’ve decided to feature At the Foot of Eternity by jackyhillary for the first week’s write-in.

The imagery here is extremely powerful, a tangible sense of heat and frustration and unease. The images of sweat gathering and salty olive flesh burst over your tongue. I suspect this story is best read slow, and several times, with chilled limoncello.

The final line delivers a sinister punch. Quietly.

Jacky Hillary

For the Cake Wednesday Write-in.

The car breaks down a mile and a half away from the coast and Judith, to Christine’s feminist right-on horror, only delights in the opportunity to become “real, capable lesbians”. They push the car to the first garage they come across which is part of a cluster of thirty or so buildings, small and plain. Christine’s thighs burn and a whole flora of sweat blooms from the armpits of her summer dress, collecting in the cup of her bra and the dip of her breasts. Judith suffers over-heating beautifully – only a glimmering film of perspiration springing to her forehead suggests that she even struggled. Having run out of dry fabric with which to dab herself dry with, Christine’s tongue darts out to sweep over her upper lip and the saltiness reminds her of the fleshy olives they gorged on at the last town. The…

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Wednesday Write-in #1

Welcome to our first Wednesday Write-in!

This is the new feature on the blog which we’ll be running every week from now on to allow all of us writers to practice our skills, and get chatting to each other about our work.

Prompts

mixtape   ::   the taste of salt   ::   a stiff drink   ::   crackle   ::   spring

Guidelines

There are no hard and fast rules, but here are some brief guidelines:

• You can use the prompts as inspiration or try to work them into your story somehow. Use as many as you want.
• When your story is done, post it online (your blog/twitter/in a comment here), tag with #wednesdaywritein and comment with a link so we can read it. You can write as many stories as you like.
• Please take the time to read and comment on as many other stories as you can.

Featured Story

We’ll feature our favourite story on the blog with a review of it and links to the author’s blog/twitter/facebook if relevant.

Posts will generally go up at 9am(ish) on Wednesday – stories are due by 9am Thursday (UK) to be considered for the featured story. You can keep posting your work after this, it just won’t be featured.

Rewards

We’ll keep track of who takes part in the write-ins, and you earn points for different things.

• Take part in a write-in = 1 point.
• Comment on other people’s stories = 1 point.
• Share/reblog this post = 1 point.

When you reach ten points the editing team will give detailed feedback on a story of your choice. This only counts for separate sessions—so if you write five stories for one write-in, that counts as one, and if you share on both facebook and twitter, that’s one. We might give an extra point if you comment on everyone’s stories, but we’ll have to wait and see.

And don’t forget we’re trying to get to 100 likes on our facebook page by the end of today. Please share the page with your friends – if we reach 100 by tonight we’ll pick a random person from that 100 to win a book!

Any questions? Otherwise, have fun writing!

Share and win!

We’re at just over 80 views on our facebook page, and we’d like to reach 100.

If you help us reach it by the end of the Wednesday Write-in tomorrow, we’ll pick a random winner from those 100 people and send you a free book on writing.

So please: like, share, and comment on CAKE.shortandsweet, and you could win yourself or a friend a free book!

New feature – Wednesday write-in

We’d really like to make this blog more interactive, and so we’ve come up with the idea of having a weekly write-in.

Every week we’ll put up a list of prompts, and we’d love for people to write short stories or flash fiction using those words or inspired by them. You can either post your stories in the comments, or on your blog and link to them here.

To make it a little more exciting, we’ll feature the best story on the blog every week, and if any are truly outstanding we might even publish them in the magazine! We’ll also have a reward scheme, so if you join the write-in five times, the editing team will give you detailed feedback on a story of your choice.

If it works out popular we might dream up some other rewards!

Some beautiful photos of one of our lovely host venues, The Portico Library … check it out!

a slice of imagination

The Portico is one of my favourite libraries. It’s tucked away in the heart of Manchester’s city centre – blink and you’ll definitely miss it. It’s one of few surviving independent libraries and the team work really hard to keep it going, and to engage with local writers, both new and old. When I started setting up CAKE.shortandsweet I knew that Portico would be the ideal host, and was delighted by how enthusiastic and accommodating I found them.

Most of the library is accessible only to members, but I was lucky enough to be shown around the first time I visited. I have plans of using the library as the setting for part of a graphic novel I desperately want to write … one of these days!

You can find out more about the Portico Library on their website.

All images © Sarah Grace Logan 2012

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Tell us what you want from us

What sort of things would you like to see us posting on CAKEshortandsweet?

For example: daily writing prompts; interviews with our authors; writing tips; links to other publications/competitions; book reviews/suggestions; reviews of our venues; writing competitions; more meetup events; stories from the writers’ circle; guide to our editing process.

Let us know if any of these interest you, or if you have any suggestions for what you’d like to talk to us about. We started CAKE to help other writers, so tell us how we can do that.

CAKE.writerscircle this weekend

We’ll be meeting at Nexus Art Café tomorrow from 2 – 5 pm for another writers’ circle meeting, hope to see many of you there!

If you’d like to have some writing workshopped, bring along a copy or email it to cake.shortandsweet@gmail.com by

Round 5 Submissions

A reminder that submissions for Issue 4 are due by the end of today. The theme was Dog Days.

We are now opening submissions for Issue 5.

The theme is Lessons

The deadline is September 1st

The theme is optional. Stories up to 2200 words. Good luck!