Discussion thread -- October 2015 75-word Writing Challenge

Since the voting is over, now I can translate my Native American tale.



Encounter with Sky Fire Wheel, Medicine Man.​

"It was good to see you again. We missed you. You are kind and wise. We will both meet the Great Spirit in the end. Peace be with you space brother. We must leave. Until, we meet again."

"Goodbye my friends."

"Who were they Great Grandpa?"

"Sky people."

"Aliens?! There are no such thing as people from outer space."

"You watch too much television. And besides that. You should learn to speak Lakota."
 
Sorry so late -- things have gotten away from me. This is a longer list than usual, and there are still quite a few I'd like to have included, but I had to stop somewhere.

Glen -- Brocas's
Luiglin -- Digital Communication (My kind of title)
LittleStar -- Piece Taut to a Whirled at Wore (Fabulous poetry)
Ashleyne -- The Helpful Earthling
Droflet -- One Small Misstep
Juliana -- Fowl Words
Hex -- Alien Bride
Mr Orange -- Gernusian Octopoids...
ratsy -- Fathers Will Be Fathers
*DG Jones -- The Ministry of Language...*
Jo -- Laughter Trumps All
Robert Mackay -- Terminat Hora Diem...
TitaniumTi -- The Last Enemy
mosaix -- Out of the Mouths...
Culhwch -- Cheers to the Universal Language
HB -- Lexicatastrophe
TJ -- Graffiti Gongorism
Ursa -- Little-Read Writing Hood... (Very close second)

Many thanks to those lovely people who mentioned my story -- it's an honor to be included in anyone's list with all of these contenders.
 
Well there you go. Totally unexpected, seriously, until the votes started to come in. The Ministry was actually my second attempt at a story for the month. The first week or so was spent trying to shoehorn what I thought was a completely different, really quirky idea into the brief. But the more I tried to squeeze it in the more mangled and deformed it became, until it died, and I went back to the drawing board.

Like all worthwhile ideas, the idea for The Ministry came from a drunk conversation with my university housemates 15 years ago, where we supposed that language itself was currency and you had to buy the ability to talk and communicate from the Government. As for the story, I wanted the bureaucrat behind the desk to have very florid, articulate speech, as though he were taunting the stricken K. I gave K that name to show the reduction of his identity. Special wink to @Victoria Silverwolf, who correctly spotted the reference to Kafka.

Thank you thank you thank you to the 9 bandidos who stumped up a vote - I am grateful to you all.
Thanks to everyone who shortlisted / mentioned The Ministry.
And thanks for the congrats :)

Special mentions once more to Tim and Victoria. Your reviews are always pretty good but this month they were inspired. Very clever and witty. But... you've now set a precedent - can you match the theme to the review each month from now on? We shall be watching!

Lastly thanks to everyone who entered. The stories were of an extra-high calibre this month, which is probably reflected by the number of stories that garnered votes. And it means I'm extra blown away to have come out as the winner.

I shall now reward myself with a full Portuguese breakfast!
 
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Congrats again, DG! And well done, for praising Victoria and Tim for their reviews! It's clearly a lot of work to do the reviews each month, and we're so lucky to benefit from their efforts. CC
 
Well indeed CC. Months ago I dabbled in the reviews myself but I found I just didn't have the time, so massive kudos to those two for keeping it up. I think Victoria in particular hasn't missed a month in years - that's a heck of an effort.
 
Yes, congrats DG, a great story, and deserved winner. Your next milestone is to win 75 challenges two in a row, if I'm not mistaken :cool:

As for my entry, thanks you very much to those who listed it or honourable mentioned it, they are all very weel appreciated. I really wasn't expecting much from this month, as I was fully aware my choices made it pretty inaccessible, which is why I'm very happy that many of you, firstly understood it, and secondly thought it worthy of mentions.

When voting I mentioned that there are two things I have come to think about poetry, my own personal preferences perhaps, but we have to go with what appeals to us don't we.
1. We don't have to understand what is being said to be moved by it and find pleasure in reading it.
2. I think poetry should be heard, and not read.

Obviously this second point is a big statement, and i already know many people personally that disagree with me. But for me i do struggle to read poetry (though i do enjoy it) i find i cant unpack the images and words in the same way that others can, or certainly not as quickly. I used to think that the only difference between a Ted Hughes and a Writing student's poetry was that Hughes had hundreds of people spending hundreds of hours unpacking the meaning, while the student gets five minutes, one read through. I have come to learn the error in this statement, and appreciate what goes into a good/great poem. But it all comes back to hearing the words aloud, prefereably from the writers own mouth, as who but they know where the stresses come and how hard or soft the line breaks should be. I have found myself moved in much greater ways from a poem being read aloud at a reading, as opposed to not being able to concetrate enough to finish it when I read it myself.

My poem played into this train of thought, through almost exclusive use of the homonym it shows the flexibility and fluidity of language, and hopefully goes to show this fluidity extends, in true Sassurian fashion, to the meaning of the words rather than the words on the page, or in the case of my poem, to the words on the page and the sounds they make rather than the meaning they impart.



... But none of that really comes across in an online forum:sick:

Playing around with language is something that I genuinly love doing, and could have entered several poems or prose pieces for this category, so another thank you to the pair who helped choose it.


And again, congrats to DG. Im looking forward to another cracking genre choice from you like Historical fiction:)
 
congratulations DG, a great story and worthy runaway winner.

i'll echo the sentiments on Tim's and Victoria's reviews. many thanks to you both and i don't know how you do it month after month. on several occasions i have felt inspired to do reviews and next thing there are 5 stories posted, then 10, and before i know it 20. then the whole thing gets too daunting and i turn my computer off and crawl back under the duvet. every month i am incredibly impressed by the effort and care you take over the reviews.

EDIT: and thanks TDZ for the mention!

oh right, and my story, well, as i mentioned before i got inspired by the various google translations of Tim's reviews; "we come in peas" got in my mind and it kind of just ran from there.
 
Well done, DG Jones. Loved your story right from the start (and wondered how anything was going to beat it -- and there you are, nothing did).

And thank you for the mentions (and the vote!). My writing course tutor was holding forth about writing horrible things "unflinchingly", where my inclination is always to flinch, so I was trying (it made me flinch every time I read it back, but see above).
 
Congrats, DGJ! A worthy winner!


Ooh, two more listings -- a mile of ornate hieroglyphic thanks, Ashleyne and TDZ! And another vote -- Grand Canyonesque and relentlessly hyberbolic thanks, Ursa!
 
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Thanks for all the votes. This was my second largest ever haul, which was quite surprising, as I had the same trouble as our eventual, worthy winner did:
DG Jones said:
The Ministry was actually my second attempt at a story for the month. The first week or so was spent trying to shoehorn what I thought was a completely different, really quirky idea into the brief. But the more I tried to squeeze it in the more mangled and deformed it became, until it died, and I went back to the drawing board.
Click to expand...
This is what happened to me: I came up with the merest germ of an idea, but had doubts about how viable (logical) it was, doubts that took root because of my failure to come up with a working plot with no word count limit, let alone a 75-word one. Hence my resort to that old standby of mine, playing with words. Even then I was a bit worried, because of the use of a word, preposition, that seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. However, I kept it in as, relying on that most reliable of sources (Wiktionary), I knew that 'preposition' was an obsolete form of 'proposition', the usual word used to convey what I wanted.


Oh, and I don't think many of you** will be surprised that I liked an entry, LittleStar's, built on an overwhelming number of homonyms (specifically homophones that are not homographs).


** - Particularly those of you that have seen my desecration of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan.
 
Congratulations, DG, on a great story and a well-deserved win!

Thank you for the mentions, Saharren, Harebrain and TDZ.

And -- hey! -- thanks for the vote, Mad Alice! Cowabunga! Box of birds! Grouse! Cool!
 
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