alexconall: the Pleiades (Default)
Alex Conall, social justice bard ([personal profile] alexconall) wrote2013-08-02 07:48 pm

Fiction Fishbowl August: trees, herbs, and flowers

The fishbowl is CLOSED for prompts. Fills will be trickling in over the next week or so.

Stories available for sponsorship.

Most of the time, writing is a solo activity. A writing fishbowl (as [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith shows) is writing in public: 'under glass', as Harlan Ellison has been known to do, sitting in a bookstore window and writing an idea provided by an audience member.

This is my bookstore window.

The theme of this month's fishbowl is trees, herbs, and flowers. Please leave prompts about characters, settings, plot elements, and such related to that theme. I will write poems and short stories based on your prompts.

This is an exercise in crowdfunded creativity. An excellent way to inspire me to do a thing is to pay me to do it; if you like what you see and you want to see more, feed the storyteller.

There are several options for feeding the storyteller:

1) Sponsor the fishbowl. I have a Paypal button for donations. The recommended minimum donation is $1, because Paypal takes a fee from every transaction. Any Dreamwidth user who donates (make sure you mention your username) will be on my access list (where I post at-least-weekly excerpts from my works in progress) for two months. Anonymous donations are of course welcome, but cannot get that bonus.









If donations reach $50—keep an eye on the ticker—I will post a two-thousand-word prose short story; this month it will be "Dragon Phoenix Match", based on "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight".

2) Sponsor a story. Each story will have a price tag, using the same semi-pro rate as above, rounded down to the nearest dollar. A two-hundred-word prose story will cost $5, a two-thousand-word story $50, comparable to what Duotrope Digest assures me I would make by selling the story to a semiprofessional market. Similarly, a poem of up to ten lines will cost $5, of up to twenty-five lines $10, of up to forty lines $15, of up to sixty lines $20, and a longer poem, we'll talk. When you sponsor a story (prose or poetry), tell me which story you want to sponsor—every time I complete a story for the fishbowl, I will comment to the prompter with the title, the medium, a brief summary, and the price—and I will immediately post it publicly to this journal, with your username listed as sponsor.

3) Spread the word. Link to this post from any social media, suggest that people come and leave prompts, and leave a comment saying you did so. If you link back and you leave prompts, I will use one of those prompts. If I see a new prompter or donor (anonymous people, sadly, do not count), I will post a free story; this month it will be "Longer than the Way", based on "Riddles Wisely Expounded". "Longer than the Way" is posted.

Whenever I write a story to one of your prompts, I will send you a private copy of the story, via Dreamwidth PM to logged-in prompters or email to anonymous prompters who give their email (anonymous prompters who do not leave contact information cannot get private copies of stories). Please do not share it with anyone.

At least one of the stories resulting from the fishbowl will be posted for free, so y'all have a better idea of what you're getting into.

At the end of the fishbowl, I will post a list of all the unsold stories, to simplify life for anyone looking to see if you might want to sponsor something.

This fishbowl will last until the evening of Sunday, August 4.

Leave your prompts here! This month's theme is trees, herbs, and flowers.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)

Prompts

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith 2013-08-02 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)
1) Weeping willow.

2) The language of flowers.

3) An asexual-aromantic person who works at a flower shop and enjoys making couples happy.

I'll be boosting the signal on DW, LJ, and FB.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2013-08-03 12:00 am (UTC)(link)
Gentians. Big purple ones, big blue ones, and especially the tiny blue ones - the shock and wonder and surprise of the blue of the sky and the blue of the glaciers and, suddenly, dotted all over the scree, above the grass line, the tiny blue ones.

(Anonymous) 2013-08-03 01:51 am (UTC)(link)
The scent of jasmine.
siliconshaman: black cat against the moon (Default)

[personal profile] siliconshaman 2013-08-03 02:29 am (UTC)(link)
Taking the looooong perspective, and growing a forest.

A tree-ent's views on gardening, or a fairy's.
Edited 2013-08-03 02:30 (UTC)
perfectworry: she was still young not yet highly strung which you need to be when you get older (blackbird claw and raven wing)

[personal profile] perfectworry 2013-08-03 03:14 am (UTC)(link)
• Holly King or Oak King (you're free to play in this sandbox with those characters (King Esyllt is the Oak King))
• "morning glories, for love in vain"
elanor or other magic flowers

I'll be signal boosting on Twitter and my LJ account.
serpentine: (Default)

[personal profile] serpentine 2013-08-03 04:37 pm (UTC)(link)
1) The mint family's prolific growing habits.

2) Roses are overdone.