Tag Archives: Slice of Life Writing Challenge

A World Divided

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On Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was an episode about a planet wanting to join the Federation but could not because a small part of its population was opposed to it. It had to be unanimous, a united planet to be a member.

A united planet.

We who call ourselves citizens of the United States would be noted as liars to say we are united merely as a country these days. Once we got over the shock of it, I’d say we stopped being truly united five or so years after 9/11. Perhaps there was a momentary resurgence of patriotism when Osama Bin Laden was finally taken down, but the bloom fell off that rose pretty quickly.

Since Cain first had his jealous streak and took out Able it has been man’s penchant to divide and hold his cause in favor.

It is one of the oldest strategies in the book of power. And it works, because it plays directly into human nature.  We classify ourselves along political, social, religious, and economic lines, and so on. We used to agree to disagree and, if not fine, at least be tolerant of opposing views. These matters are central to human social existence and tend to resist any attempts at resolution. As a result, each side views the position of the other as a threat to its very existence.  The more we lose sight of our commonalities, the more we drift away from each other and become less human. When we group ourselves away from those outside our immediate groups and regard them with fear and hostility, even when they’ve done nothing, we forget that they are humans too, and that makes us part of the problem.

These intractable conflicts are ones that have continued unresolved and seem stuck in their levels of intensity and destructiveness. People tend to strike out at what is different, what they fear, which is bad when what we fear is each other.
It’s worse when we give in to that fear, give in to that desire to inflict as much harm, physical and psychological, on each other as possible. For so many this constant sense of threat and hostility pervades everyday life and overrides our ability to recognize any shared concerns.

For a nation renowned for embracing the different, some in the U.S. seem to have lost sight of this within our own walls. Where will her huddled masses go if Liberty’s torch grows dim?

I live in New York City, and twice within my lifetime, we’ve been a target. It’s a very sobering thing to have at the back of my mind that the physical symbolism of Liberty, if not all she stands for, could be blown out by force?

And considering the current clime…

So many nations flexing power with malice, not peace. We as a people seem to be doing more and more of separating ourselves from each other than coming together. 

Countries Currently at War 2026 according to the World Population Review
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-currently-at-war

Earth would never be admitted as a member of the United Federation of Planets as we stand now.

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Day 7 – Two Writing Teachers

 

Public Insect

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There are several signs of spring. The warming air, the first hints of flora, annual fauna, and springing forward into Daylight Saving Time. I’m waiting for the natural aspects of spring to appear, and on Sunday, I will begrudgingly lose an hour to gain more sun. In the interim, I have become cognizant of another personal marker of spring:

My social calendar.

For obvious reasons, my public out decrease along with the temperatures between November and February. Oh, I still go out. I’ve been to movies, caught a couple of shows, dinners with friends – uh, hello, I’m Raivenne, I don’t hibernate, but I do slow down.

I’ve looked at the past few years, and the pattern is the same. March may come in like a lion and leave like a lamb weather-wise, but for my social calendar, it is the exact opposite, and I love it.

Today is just the 6th, yet in the span of the past three days, I went from only having three outings this month to eight. And that’s just March. I have at least three outings for each month from now until January. Mind you, this does not include the larger events, such as a convention I’m attending in Atlanta in April, Las Vegas in November, and my annual birthday getaway in September

So it’s March, the event horses have begun lining up at the gate– .

— and the Le Raivenne [a.k.a. the Social Butterfly turned Mothra] is off!

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Day 6 – Two Writing Teachers

A Little Perspective

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I got up this morning go through my usual routine while not-so-silently kvetching about the snowy-rain mix coming down, only grateful it was not full-out snow. Do I wear my boots or tough it out in my sneakers? What if it is not raining that hard? I don’t want to be standing around all day in boots, yada, yada, yada… I make a decision and head out. It’s dank and just miserable looking outside.

The path from my home to the train station leads past several tenement buildings and projects.  A part of City life in my current neighborhood is the occasional appearance of memorials for the recently departed. I’m ashamed to say, they are so much a part of the scenery that while I see them, I really don’t. 

At least, until this afternoon.

This afternoon, as I returned home, I noticed one such memorial. This was somehow different, and as I looked closer, I understood why. It was a large portrait was that of a baby. This life could not have been more than a few months if I am gauging this infant correctly. Someone lost a baby. Do we even want to go into all the reasons why the younger a life is when it departs from us, the more tragic it seems? No. It just is.

And suddenly, today’s highly annoying rain/snow crap was considerably less so.

A Little perspective is everything…

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Day 5 – Two Writing Teachers

Articulate This

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I’m in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. Two of the GPs are out, and there’s an understandable delay. I’m not happy, but being retired has its advantages. I had not packed my day chock-full of All The Things To Be Done On My One Off. I’m not stressed and have time. My doctor is in the office, and I absolutely do not wish to reschedule until next month or possibly longer, so I wait.

A patient is making his displeasure at the delay known to the nurses at reception. As in, I can hear his complaints over The Hu (a Mongolian folk metal band), over my iPod (yes, I still use my iPod). A woman sitting near me and I give each other the “Oh, you hear him too, huh?” empathic smile that all who have gone through such before have, and strike up a conversation. I am a born-and-bred New Yorker; she is a transplant from another state, having lived here for less than two years.  We touch on television and learn that we both have a penchant for period dramas. We spent a few minutes on classic books, version the Hollywood interpretations, and that’s when it happened…

She shakes her head, “Wow…”
“What?” I ask.
“You. The way you speak… You’re well read and very artic…”

I am going to gather she stopped short at that point, less because her brain kicked in and more because I’m sure my expression went from amicable to apoplectic by the second syllable of the classic “A” word used with well-spoken blacks: Articulate.

Was it because I did not interject “like” and/or “you know” every fifth word or so? Perhaps it was my lack of “neck roll”? I do not know. However, I’m pretty sure I popped a capillary or two in my efforts to restrain my agitation at hearing this.

Worse, I am hearing it from someone less than 30 years of age. Someone who assuredly should know better, coming from a – not major, but a metropolis. Geographical differences aside, clearly Barack and Michelle Obama, Kamal Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Maxine Waters are ethnic flukes, as though they do not speak the same English spoken by the majority of people in this country.

“I mean, I mean….” She starts the familiar back-peddle seen often when people are caught hoisted on their own petard.

“Oh, I know what it is you meant.” I stop the peddling in its tracks. “I don’t know what you were exposed to in (name of city redacted to not paint all of its denizens with the broad brush of ignorance), that gave you such preconceived notions, but for the record, it is not a compliment to be surprised, or worse, impressed, that a person of color can speak well as though it is such a foreign concept. And, it is incredibly condescending and patronizing to think we should feel complimented that it’s noticed and meets your unasked-for approval.”

Suffice it to say, the conversation ended there. It was just as well, for my name was called to see my GP not too long after.

It is amazing that this still requires clarification, but here it is: some of us (Black people) become a little perturbed when people call out our articulateness.

It perpetuates the stereotypes that Blacks speak mostly in slang, in African-American Vernacular (aka Ebonics), or in anything other than standardized English. It is also divisive, a separating of us into an “us” and “them”. It is the stereotype that is perpetuated even within less affluent black communities every time a well-spoken black person is accused of “talking white”. The stereotype that equates articulate styles of speech as belonging to “Caucasian” rather than belonging to “intelligence”, as though one was still the exclusive dominion of the other. Blacks do not assume every white person speaks with a major in English, so why is it still a thing of note to some when encountering those of us who have a more extensive use of verbiage, diction, and enunciation?

Here we are in 2036 Anno Domini (CE for those who prefer the secular nomenclature), and it’s an aggrievance that yes, this is still a conversation.

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Day 3 – Two Writing Teachers.

Slice of Life - Two Writing Teachers

Nano Nano

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Oh, if only I were as prolific in writing as Williams was in adlibbing!

Once again – glutton for punishment I am, I participated in this year’s National Novel Writing Month or simply NaNoWriMo as many, sometimes cringingly, call it. In layman’s terms I had write 50,000 words of my story/novel in 30 days.

Why 50k and calling it a novel? I’ll let the NaNoWriMo website explain it:

We’ve found that 50,000 words is a challenging but achievable goal for many people, even folks with full-time jobs and children. And, though on the shorter side, it’s definitely long enough to be considered a novel: 50,000 words is about the length of The Great Gatsby.

We define a novel as “a lengthy work of fiction.” Beyond that, we let you decide whether what you’re writing falls under the heading of “novel.” In short: If you believe you’re writing a novel, we believe you’re writing a novel, too.

Nanowrimo website

As a fan fiction writer I use it motivate me to go for those longer multi-chapter stories in the warren of plot bunnies running amok among the dust bunnies in my head. I am verbose – I know this. I have a fic out there that took over 277k words and eighteen months of my life to tell. So, I at least start the stories and complete them once NaNoWriMo is over.

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo off and on for a few years now. I believe they chose November because here in the States, at least, Thanksgiving at the end of the month throws a huge wrench in the gears of obtaining that 50,000 words. When I first started there were a couple of years where I had not managed my time well and had fallen far short of the goal. Now I try to hustle at the beginning of the month, with a personal goal of reaching the 50k by the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Because I know from experience nothing is getting done that Wednesday thru Friday.

Notice I said try to. I was more than annoyed with myself this year to have only reached 42823 words on the morning of the 22nd. I knew there was no way I was typing over 7k words in a single day. Between preparing for, celebrating during, cleaning up after Thanksgiving my brain just had to accept the fact that not another word was going to be typed until Saturday morning the earliest. Yeah – between family staying the weekend, and I’ll be honest – alcohol, lots of alcohol, Saturday morning at the earliest became Sunday evening before I could write again. It took until last night, but I crossed the Rubicon with 53517 words and two days to spare!

2022 NaNoWriMo Winner Badge

No, this year’s so called novel “Rock Star” is not even close to complete. I estimate another 20k, but a chunk is done, and the was the goal. So now I get to breathe for a moment, pull out the big red editor pencil and go from there.

Let’s see how others are goal tending this Tuesday…

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Slice of Life Tuesdays
Writing Challenge

So Easily Entertained

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Here’s what must be my shortest slice ever: me being oddly amused by the local flying frack enjoying breakfast.

I was minded of when my sons were toddlers picking up and tossing food with their hands. I looked very much like this. Now, here is a sentence that you won’t read every day…. the pigeon was cleaner.

It’s been a slow week – what can I tell you? Apparently nothing.

Let’s see how others are slicing it what left of this Tuesday…

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Slice of Life Tuesdays
Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

And Press “Pause”

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Today is the finish line for the 15th Year Slice of Life Story. It’s been a great run. I have not missed a day, and while I have definitely pants it close a couple of times this month, this is the first year I was never in danger of missing a post for 2022. I must say, that’s a pretty good feeling. Alas, another 31 days and flavors is in the books. Off to the next big thing, right. Hmmmm, not exactly.

Usually I go straight from the Slice of Life Writing Challenge straight into National Poetry Writing Month as I have done for the past several years.  

However, there are 18 items sitting in draft mode here on WordPress alone. Some are partially done poems needing tweaking, some essay ideas to be fleshed out, three are nothing more than a couple of lines of an idea I want to work with at some point. There’s a book I’ve been working with off and on for a couple of years. There’s my fanfiction. And let’s not talk about the literal pages of ever multiplying plot bunnies clamoring to be fleshed out into something more. Thus, I know it is not because I do not have anything to say. Because in spite of Muses best efforts to get as much out of me and onto paper, canvas and pixels, it’s all bottle-necked. I don’t like that for all my output, the things I want out the most are not getting out there. And I don’t know why.

I don’t like not knowing.

I do consider myself a decent story-teller, and yes, it pleases me that some want to hear/read what I have to say whether in poem, prose, essay, blog or my Verbal Diarrhea Diaries, but I also feel something of a responsibility to that which will remain behind in these pixels long after I am gone. Because one edict I did have is this: if I felt strongly enough about something to put it out there, even if I must apologize later [and as a Virgo who abhors being -gasp- wrong, believe me, I avoid being in that situation like it’s plague], I may edit or tone it down, but I do not take it back.

Noticed that did in there?

It is that responsibility, where I have increasingly found myself thinking of better ways to express a thought coherently only after I hit ‘publish’, which has me galled to no end. Between the bottleneck mentioned above, and this lexical lethargy has become increasingly worrisome and hit its head earlier this week. La Impostrata, a personification of the Imposter Syndrome coined by fellow blogger and real life friend GirlGriot, struck big time and for the first time ever I trashed something I wrote. No, I did not return it to draft mode to be pondered over and reworked for another time – I trashed it. And then trashed the trash can in my perturbment. I can all but hear writer friends of mine gasp in the horror at this cardinal writing sin. I know, I KNOW! I sincerely apologize to you for that horrid lapse in judgement. But mostly I apologize to myself because as a person who has files with snippets of discarded writings in the belief it will be used elsewhere later, I damn sure know better. I am ashamed of myself. Something has to give.

So rather than submit myself to another month of more writing pressure, I’m choosing to press pause on challenges for now. I’m going to step back and sit out this year’s National Poetry Writing Month.

Oh, I will still write and post poems in April, fret not (not that those who know me were). There is no way Calliope, Erato or Melpomene are easing up on me. It just won’t be for the next thirty days straight. Naturally, I’ll be here on Tuesdays for our weekly slices.

I want to feel comfortable in what I write, whether it is poems, blogs, short stories, flash and fan fiction. That the something I say that makes sense. Sometimes I need to write because I feel confident that what I say that will inform or entertain others and sometimes I need to read so that I can be better informed and entertained myself. What I will always need regardless, are times when no matter what is going on in my life I pick up my pen.

I’m simply allowing myself the grace to ease up on the writing pressures I put on myself.

We made it! Day 31 of 31 – Let’s see how others are slicing it out this final day of the challenge.

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

Unheard Spokesperson

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How’s my day, well the past three days, going so far…? I’ll let my current Facebook post answer that:

screenshot of my Facebook post: bemoaning a twenty-minute conversation on alopecia and the literal politics of black hair, only to be told “But it’s just a hair style.”

** mentally inserts every facepalming gif in existence here **

Of course, the conversation started with the slap heard around the world. I segued away from it being about the men involved and focused on the woman involved that few are talking about. The trials of alopecia for any person, but especially women, and why it’s such a big deal for black women in particular. That naturally lead to the point of the Crown Act and why it’s important, just to be told “But it’s just a hair style” after all of that. Arrggh!

I know I gave her The Look. I imagine my face must have said everything while several generations of great-grandmothers, my grandmothers on both sides and Mommie all reached out from their graves and held back my tongue, as Jesus whispered in the person’s ear um -yeah, that’s a bit not good, turn and go, my child and Lucifer concurred Yo, even I thinks ya betta walk the fuck away from her right now. My jaw still feels some kind of way weird, from the teeth ground so hard in that moment that likely kept me employed as the person made their excuse and hastened away.

Day 30 of 31 – Let’s see how others are slicing it out today…

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

I Knew It!

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Last night as I chose on my clothes for today, I pulled out a turtleneck. Despite it officially being spring, by the calendar, I knew it was going to be cold today.

This morning I look at my footwear. Originally, I had selected loafers, I switched to booties. I knew it was going to be cold today.

I look out the window and see the tree branches yield to wind. Soft open knit beret? – Sorry, you’re on the bench. Tightly knit grey toque – suit up! I knew it was going to be cold today.

Last, but hardly least, I pull my red pea coat into service. After all, I knew it was going to be cold today.

Forewarned and armed, I open my front down and head down the stairs. I reach the curb to cross the street. Now away from my building protecting me from it, a gust of wind sneaks around and slams into me. I mean, I’m physically shifted from the ferocity of it. How rude!

So what comes out of my mouth: “Holy f—! I didn’t know it was going to be cold today!”

[A warm thank you to Amy Ellerman for the honor of using my post, Amused and Bemused, in today’s Be Inspired section at Two Writing Teachers.]

Day 29 of 31 – Let’s see how others are chilling in a good way and slicing it out today…

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

Book Bash the Final Countdown

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For the TL;DR crowd who have yet to google, in a nutshell, GISH is a Guinness World Record-setting, several day, international event that empowers players to push their creative boundaries, tackle hilarious challenges, and perform incredible acts of kindness, most from the comforts of their own home. The event features special guests, literary challenges and more. The Book Bash Mini-Hunt! this weekend is thirty-six hours and while more literary oriented, no less wonderfully chaotic.

Because I did not want to leave the house, I chose four out of the nearly 100 challenges to accept. Since I never attempted fumage art before, I did what I thought would be the hardest out and got it of the way first with yesterday’s create a sign protesting the banning of books. I was wrong. The next challenge turned out to be, not so much harder, but a lot more detailed and time consuming. Create a portrait of LeVar from quotes from famous black authors and activists. I have yet to see other artists’ interpretations, but here is my entry:

Levar Burton with the entirety of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
“I Have a Dream” Speech. Click for full size.

I posted my entry to my Instagram account, tagged GISH and thought nothing of it. And then THIS happened… So, imagine my shock of all shocks when I saw the first “Like” on it, and who it was from!

Misha Collins "Likes" my GISH art!
Misha Collins “Likes” my GISH art!

I’m sure this is something curated by his staff and all of us who took up this specific challenge also got a “Like”, but it’s from his official account and it looks so cool on my account.

My third chosen challenge was a breeze. @yung_pueblo posts lovely meditative poetry on Instagram. Write your own poem in his style. Post yours on Instagram:

Because sometimes we need to remember to take a moment to put down our loads, lift up our feet and just chill...
Because sometimes we need to remember to take a moment to put down our loads, lift up our feet and just chill… Click for full size.

Because I like futzing around with photoshop I was volunteered by our team’s captain to do the challenge of taking a screenshot of barren land from Google Maps and overlay a Photoshop image, as if you have carved into the earth. Make it, of a message or drawing that would be seen from space. The message should be a call for help, as if a passing space fleet of benevolent aliens might see and come rescue us from ourselves.

Don't bomb us! Rescue us! We have Girl Scout cookies!

Because even aliens know Girl Scout Cookies are out of this world! (Or maybe they think the cookies are made from actual Girl Scouts. Hmm, maybe I should have checked the “To Serve Man” menu.)

And finally, I did it just because: According to GISH, not everyone knows this, but the first novel ever written and the world’s first science-fiction novel were both penned by women authors. In honor of these literary trailblazers, show us Frankenstein’s monster reading a copy of The Tale of Genji.

A modern-day Frankenstein's creature listen's to tunes while reading the ultimate classic.
A modern-day Frankenstein’s creature listen’s to tunes while reading the ultimate classic. Click for full size.

Yes, Creach -what? he was never given a name- is wearing earbuds and listening to “Monster Mash”, don’t judge his musical choices!

Still, as much fun as it was, it was a lot of hours on my computer without break. At 8pm, I called it quits. All I know is, if this was a mini one, I’m part excited, part terrified to experience a full one.

Day 28 of 31 – Let’s see how others are slicing it out today…

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge

15th Annual Slice of Life Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers