The fishbowl is
CLOSED for prompts. Fills will be trickling in over the next week or so.
Most of the time, writing is a solo activity. A writing fishbowl (as
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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
music and song titles. 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 added to my access list (where I post at-least-weekly excerpts from my works in progress). Anonymous donations are of course welcome, but cannot get that bonus.
If donations reach $25—keep an eye on the ticker—I will post a one-thousand-word prose short story; this month it will be "Suddenly I See".
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 the poem "this is why I tell stories (let it crumble)". "this is why I tell stories (let it crumble)" is posted! Thanks,
itsamellama!
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 Saturday, December 14. Fills will appear over that week and the following.
Leave your prompts here! This month's theme is
music and song titles.
