3 poems in Grey Sparrow!

Avoiding Trouble Prompt

Try and use as many as you can. Vary your sentence lengths. Your main character will try and avoid trouble, yet be a magnet for trouble no matter what. Why is it that when we try and avoid something it seems to look for us?


prompt words:

dump
ice-cream
knees
ordinary
mood
spiel
ball
swell
applause
sweetheart
secret
boom-boom-boom

My story "So I Drew Him A Poodle" up at decomP!

prompt for the end of June

Prompt:

try and incorporate all these prompt words in a 15 minute writing exercise, and you can cut them out later if you want to.

Try and vary sentence length.

Here are some thoughts: use these as you see fit, or don't use these "too...." phrases at all.

too embarrassing
too intimidating
too anxiety producing
too irritating
too smarmy

(these are all concepts or phrases to throw in or borrow or whatever)

PROMPT WORDS:

Cajun tomatoes
"astounding" (in quotes)
"yep" (in quotes)
cranky
snoring
flatten
well-heeled
freshen
napkin
smiley
polka lessons

Prompt words: advanced

here are your words. this is your assignment. it looks impossible from here.


knees
ice-cream
focus
thumb
mumble
fuckin'
gangsterish
neck
schnapps
watery-blond
shenanigans
leg room
buddy
guilty
flips

Prompt words: advanced

here are your words. this is your assignment. it looks impossible from here.


knees
ice-cream
focus
thumb
mumble
turkey-neck
fuckin'
schnapps
watery-blond
short-armed
buddy
guilty
flips

Prompt: try and use all of these words

Try and use all these words, then you can cut them out. Surgically.


installation
non-joiner
mole
loafers
pastel
zesty
"fuck yeah"
coffee
blood
feet
deep
Ski-Doo
X-ray

a competition

Two people compete for something. It can be anything, a dog's attention/love, a woman's attention/love... a game of Monopoly. There is something, some contest, and one clear winner.

Prompt Words:

pseudo
lipped
clogs
parted
glossy
lurk
boxers
worn
faze
pink
flap

Orgasms (originally published in DOGZPLOT)

MEG POKRASS
ORGASMS


Dr. Klein enjoyed an enormous sandwich during the beginning of the session - chewing slowly, then licking his lips for what seemed a very long time. This was the day Vivienne decided to talk about her concerns relating to adopting a dog, though her husband was allergic to animals, and hated disruption (he became irritable when she brought home a cactus with hair).

It was happening more and more frequently. His sandwiches always had raw onion. She couldn’t change her 1:00 appointment time. It was all he “had.”

“So,” Klein said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you - do you have orgasms?”

She felt her face redden, (she was actually planning to talk about buying a dog).

“Do you cum?” he asked, chewing. Masticating. In her mind, she spelled come both ways, thinking while spelling.

She hated the grunting, chomping sounds he made during silences. She missed being young, sprinklers in the summer, Slip 'N Slides. The sink that always leaked in the bathroom.

“Trying to remember?”

“Right,” she said.

“Good. You cum often, I hope?”

Many people wanted to work with Dr. Klein since he had achieved minor celebrity with his popular self-help book, “Becoming Your Own Muse,” and appeared on the Today Show.

He was the therapist who suggested she get a dog. But now he wouldn't talk about dogs at all. Every session, he brought up some part of her sex life - how she felt about her husband’s sexual performance, what her history was before her husband...

Vivienne noticed that Dr. Klein’s eyes would linger on her shirt when she was free-associating. This—mingling with the smell of onions, and his breath from four feet away, was making her shy, repressed, ill.

“I don’t come very often,” she spurted, spitting a drop, saying it.

He smiled kindly, almost priestly.

“What I really wanted to talk about is how much I want a goddamn dog,” she said, breathing through her mouth, shutting off her nose completely.

“And that I’m pregnant.” Her voice came from a lower place in her chest she'd never heard before, almost guttural.

He looked at her, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. He took his pad and pencil out from the hidden folding drawer inside the arm of his leather chair. The pencil was attached to the pad with a string – a set that came together, maybe a special order for therapists.

The onion smell was back even though the sandwich was gone -- now just a tiny invisible glop in the doctor’s colon. Vivienne looked at the rug for stray ringlets that may have fallen near her feet. Nausea came so quickly.

She pictured the dog as she heaved, protective and warm -- could hear his throaty bark. v

Why Are You Telling Me This?

Write a situation in which someone is telling your main character something they don't want to know, don't want to hear about. The focus of the story will be the aftermath, trying to get the thing the person told them to feel less oppressive.

some prompt words:

nighttime
fist
shiny
frame
married
crucial
pocket

2 poems up at the new YB journal

How fun this is, to be included in the new YB. Other writers include Rob Woodard, Luca Penne, Sean Lovelace, Patrick Hill, and Molly Gaudry. Editor Rose Hunter.

Help! The Rules Have Changed!

Write about a situation in which all of a sudden "the rules" have changed. An example would be an adult child arriving home for the Christmas holidays to find that his parents have become... Buddhists (this is a very dumb example, but hey).

Er.. another example would be, your character was forbidden to flirt w/ a certain (perhaps married) person and now that same person has become single and available. The character's way of behaving becomes the key element in this exercise... having to face with the unknown in once familiar territory.

Guilt and God and all that fun stuff

Hopefully you are not as screwed up as I am (I've always suffered from an annoying unconscious guilt complex), though even if you are not screwed up at all (heehee) you might find this writing exercise useful.

Write about a situation that compels the narrator to feel guilty... and this may be a very subtle situation, it may not even involve the narrator. Feel free to work with the idea of God or a god (higher power?) or the lack of belief in God, a god, or higher power whatsoever... you get the idea... get all existential if you feel up to it - or non-existential. Explore Nonetheism. Or, poke fun at existentialism/ The idea is, just put it out there, it's Friday. Give that big guy a run for his money (he can handle it).

here are some prompt words if you want them:

thud
elephant
furry
disgusting
tic
awkward
glasses
plump
tough-ass

so excited to have my story in Monkeybicycle!!!!!

story up at 3:AM

my story up at Thieves Jargon

just another odd prompt

Kick it off w/ one of these fragments

"like anybody else...."
"It might have had something to do with..."
"that was the summer I..."

these fragments may be helpful.


Add an animal to this story - a misbehaving animal!

A mirror should figure prominently in the story, a mirror that makes a character look/feel pasty or fat! Ha!

prompt: carelessness

vary line lengths. be sure to bring in as much sensory information as possible. Carelessness is a theme you might want to use.


prompt words:

button
Christ
trick
hair
heave
pool
nail clippers
champagne
coffee table

a little habit of not saying what they mean

ok so this character has a little habit of not saying what they mean, beating around the bush, being indirect. This character wants something very badly but can't ask for it.

Prompt words:

right
twist
center
ankle
shiver

Four Things You Never Want to do Again and one Thing You Love

write down four things you never want to do again, and one thing you wish you could do again strongly. Incorporate them into a story vaguely or quite directly - Slip in the thing you love somehow - let it make a wistful guest star appearance.

prompt words:

hoot
celery soda
jelly
bad
quiz
sting
twist
miniature
beard

My Father's Shoes by S.D. Byrd

This story rocks in such a big way I just have to put it out there. It's been a long while since it was originally published.

S.D. Byrd is a pen name for my friend Steven who is one of the most amazing flash fiction writers around. I am hoping he will let me tell you who he is. But in the interim, I will re-publish this piece from In Posse.

the lost connection

Here's an idea. Your main character has a friend that she all of the sudden finds out... doesn't get her. After knowing this person for awhile, and having become close to this person, the M.C. finds out that the friend is totally not tapped in to who she is. It feels like there was never a genuine connection. Seems like a situation that is common in the internet age.


Here are some words:

road
edge
rabies
bloody
bunnies
rich
croak
view
alien
bedside
soup
turkey
ignore
blown

picture prompts

uh... yeah. Create a story from one/all of these if so inspired.

let it all hang out... whatever that means.

whisper this story to someone. be frank. let it all hang out. whatever that means.

Some words to kick around if you like prompt words:

skid
kick
glow
hassle
mumble
door
rental
Christmas card
cell
bottle-blond
ache
seed
goon
growl

Wigleaf Top 50!

Okay - I'm beyond excited. My story, Leaving Hope Ranch, first published in 971 Menu... made this prestigious list. I also have 2 stories on the longer list. I'm in happy shock, happy shock!

Storyglossia: Short Story Month - Meg Pokrass - elimae

Storyglossia: Short Story Month - Meg Pokrass - elimae

Hit & Run Magazine - my messy writing notes!

You've gotta love a website that publishes the writer's process. In my case, a messy process...

an empty celebration

write about an empty celebration, the going through the motions of celebrating.

kimono
life
books
short
stick
alarm
wander
pocket
chin
gaze

Desert Air, orig. published at Tulip Weekly

Desert Air

18 12 2008

By: Meg Pokrass

Second day at the summer cottage, my bikini is damp. My hat is hiding, playing an evil game. I pour a little of mom’s Kahlua in a plastic cup, lick the sides.

Yesterday I kissed a root-beer skinned boy who said he’d meet me at the pool today at one o’clock.

My big sister watches perched on the sofa, a sweater over her shoulder, staring at invisible graffiti on my body.

“See ya,” I say. She gives me the finger, goes back to her book about time travel.

Outside, the desert air feels fake, like a blow dryer. By the pool my boy looks me over as if I dropped from a tree, as though there were no yesterday. He dives into the pool like the tip of an arrow. A group of girls near him explode in squeals.

I’d do anything for my hat, which is now spinning like a pinwheel in the hands of a pretty girl with bold black eyeliner. She puts it on - watching my face.

I am interviewed by Ryan Manning

the friend

Meeting with a friend in which something happens/is told that forever changes the friendship/the way you narrator views this friendship.


worries
clock
TV
cheekbone
prize
mirror
money
bastard
garbage
slam

"The Old Familiar Way Of Being" Prompt

Create a character in a story or poem who is aware that they have "an old familiar way" of being. Let them feel something about that. How does that way of being define this character and his/her relationship with the self/with others/ an environment.

words to use or not use:

ruined
tongue
offer
shy
immediate
floor
broom
thrill
automatic

My story, "Wrappers", up now at The Pedestal

What Sanford Meisner Said to Actors

Sanford Meisner, one of America's foremost acting teachers/actors of the last century said this to his students many years ago:

"Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances."

My friend Alicia Gifford and I were discussing this today (she brought this up) and we both agreed that writing - creative writing... feels the same way.

The strongest tools we have in helping us to give birth to a living character are:

taste, touch, smell, hear, see

I won the Dinner With Lydia Davis Story Contest!!

Ravi Mangla's story is runner up - and it's fabulous. the other story entries were amazing. This was too fun. I hope Tim does more contests that are this nutty and creative.