Alone and Unobserved

In case you haven’t been following along, I just finished participating in a week-long daily creativity experiment with several other readers, writers and frequenters of the Mind on Fire blog. (The original invitation to participate is here. I know, I know, I should’ve posted about it immediately.) Every day, John Remy at MoF drew a different tarot card, and we participants used that card (directly or tangentially, concretely or abstractly) to spark our imaginations and inspire some sort of creation. The experiment ended yesterday, and I would call it a success. There were enough submissions, and enough different genres, media and styles represented that John still hasn’t finished compiling galleries for the last two days.

I’ve posted my own wrapup below. Each day is represented, with its card, some keywords commonly associated with the card, and a link to an explanation of the card’s symbolism on Joan Bunning’s Learn Tarot site. I’ve also included a link to my own contribution for each of the days, as well as links to the card drawing posts and the existing submission galleries.

Day One: Knight of Swords

Keywords:

• direct/blunt
• authoritative/overbearing
• incisive/cutting
• knowledgeable/opinionated
• logical/unfeeling

(More symbolism)

Day One on Mind on Fire: Card drawing | Gallery

Day Two: The Hermit

Keywords:

• introspection
• searching
• guidance
• solitude

More symbolism

Day Two on Mind on Fire: Card drawing | Gallery

Day Three: Two of Pentacles

Keywords:

• juggling
• flexibility
• fun

More symbolism

Day Three on Mind on Fire: Card drawing | Gallery

Day Four: The Devil

Keywords:

• bondage
• materialism
• ignorance
• hopelessness

More symbolism

Day Four on Mind on Fire: Card drawing | Gallery

Day Five: Nine of Swords

Keywords:

• worry
• guilt
• anguish

More symbolism

Day Five on Mind on Fire: Card drawing | Gallery

Day Six: Two of Cups

Keywords:

• connection
• truce
• attraction

More symbolism

Day Six on Mind on Fire: Card drawing | Gallery (coming soon)

Day Seven: Six of Pentacles

Keywords:
Having/Not having:

• resources
• knowledge
• power

More symbolism

Day Seven on Mind on Fire: Card drawing (featuring CatGirl!) | Gallery (coming soon)

In conclusion: I’ve felt recently that I was stagnating creatively, but this week I somehow managed to create something new every day for six days. It’s a good feeling, and not one I feel often enough.

If you aren’t subscribed to the RSS feed and/or don’t follow me on Twitter and/or aren’t my friend on Facebook, you may have missed the new flash fiction piece I posted today, inspired loosely by the Two of Pentacles card in the tarot deck, and more directly by the Mind on Fire Group Creativity Experiment.

On a Roll
Flash fiction
1184 words

Once again I’m a day and a half late posting my Flashfic Friday update, but I have something special for you: a fantastic Guide to Golems, including discussions of their creation, education and care. It’s filed under Essays because it’s 100% true.

New Essay!
Check it out: A Guide to Golems

The new short-short-short flash fiction piece is up now. Sorry about the late update!

Check it out: Abducted

Today’s flash fiction piece is actually a photocomic, which started out as a hand-made zine created at a Valentine’s Day Zine-Making Workshop at the library. Click on the image below to read the whole thing!

Extemporaneous Valentine

It’s time for the new and improved Flashfic Friday, where I post something short and sweet (and, knowing me, probably gory and disturbing) every Friday, and you let me know what you think.

So here’s the first installment!

Flashfic Friday: Mom and Dad will save us

It is about being at home alone, or something.

Things have changed a bit around Alone and Unobserved.

First: As you can see if you are viewing this at aloneandunobserved.com on a regular computer, Alone and Unobserved has a new theme. I was tired of wrestling with the Sandbox theme, which was crippled in several respects and—I am convinced—was coded by drunk insane people. (Sorry to the Sandbox dev team, but… yeah.)

Second: If you view this blog on an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll notice yet another theme, this one optimized for viewing on one of those devices.

Third: Because of the change in themes, comments are now showing up where they are supposed to. So if you commented on my recent ten-minute fiction piece, your comment should now be visible! Yayz!

Fourth: Google has verified my ownership of this blog and I now have a blog-specific email address, sean@aloneandunobserved.com, which you can always find on the About Me page. You can use it to send me feedback, but please do not sell it to spammers.

Fifth, and finally: I’m going to try and start writing more, and to motivate me in that direction I am resurrecting the Flash Fiction of the Week feature. Expect the next installment this Friday.

Er, that is all for now.

Twitter seems to be bringing me a lot of good things lately, and today it brought me the link to Write or Die, an online writing motivation tool designed by a truly evil-minded person who goes by the name of Dr. Wicked.

The premise: writers often find it hard to motivate themselves to write unless there is a pressing, immediate consequence theatening. Write or Die provides that consequence! Just enter the desired word count and time limit, choose how diabolically evil you want the program to be, and then start writing in the text box provided!

You WILL write—or face the consequences!

Well, I did write, for ten whole minutes, and this bit of silliness is what came of it:

And so there I was — 309 words in 9 minutes, 55 seconds

As usual, feel free to let me know how much you love it/how much it sucks in the comments.

I may be incommunicado for the next few days, so I’ll just leave you with a short scene I wrote a few weeks ago and never got around to doing anything with.

“Dénouement“

I don’t like losing control, for any reason. But sometimes it’s helpful, even necessary.

A few months ago, a friend made the mistake of wondering in my hearing what his life would have been like if he had been born into a different family. So I told him! (Moral: don’t hypothesize around a writer, unless you want to hear a detailed story with that premise.) And now I’ve pared that story down to a flash-fiction piece.

“Kiss“
FlashFic, 582 words

[One note: a "bishop" is the head of a local Mormon congregation and is considered responsible for the local members' spiritual welfare.]