#IWSG September - WEP results - Authors as beta partners.

Hello, and welcome to the September IWSG! For the first time in awhile I'm actually posting instead of inviting a guest poster. In October, I'm looking forward to having Jemima Pett who's about to launch her next book.

How's your month been? Before I get into my IWSG post, I'll report that we at WEP have had a very successful month again with our stable of wonderful writers who blow us away each challenge. They just get better and better. 

The August challenge was LONG SHADOW and it resulted in many poetry entries which was awesome. Our resident poet, Nilanjana Bose, had lots of company.

The winners for the August competition were chosen from our team's shortlist by the awesome Nick Wilford. So we announce Toi Thomas, Dixie Jarchow and Sonia Dogra as the outright winners. Congratulations! It's Toi's second win in a row, proof that purely heartfelt stories resonate more than any other.

                                   

Now to the IWSG. 

Alex's awesome co-hosts for the September 2 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, J Lenni Dorner, Deniz Bevan, Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, and Louise - Fundy Blue! Please visit and say hi!

  Be sure to visit the
Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website.

 September 2 question - If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?

That's not too hard. Like all writers, I have several authors I look up to and would be happy to emulate in some small way - Ernest Hemingway, Paullina Simons, Anita Shreve, Pat Conroy to name those who must have been sitting in the forefront of my subsconscious mind. I can't imagine Ernest being a very patient beta partner so I skipped over him. Paullina Simons and Pat Conroy have written two of my favorite books of all time that I return to for inspiration at least once a year so they must know something about this writing game. Paullina Simons' The Girl in Times Square - superb storyline and emotional hits. Pat Conroy's Beach Music is still up there with unforgettable characters and settings. Hmmm. Who to choose? It's pretty much a dead heat, but I think I'd go with Paullina Simons. What a writer, traveller and wordsmith. I could sure learn a lot from her.

Look forward to hearing about many fabulous authors during my rounds.

Originally published in 2004. Never forgotten.

LINK kindle edition

Thanks for coming by. See you on my rounds.

From my Paris collection. Old Paris.

#WEPff AUGUST - LONG SHADOW - my entry - Thoughts on a Dying Evening

Hello all!

Welcome to WEP for August, the prompt, Long Shadow. This past month I've been immersing myself in poetry. I believe poets are the cleverest of writers. The best prose is poetic. So I decided to go with a short entry using stimulus from three poets. You will recognize at least one, I'm sure.

Thoughts on a Dying Evening.

I walked in solitude down to the lake that fronted my cabin.

Evening shrouded me. The last gleam of sunshine faded on the hilltops, stabbing long fingers of shadow along the valley. 

Sunset’s last leaf of gold glimmered, vanished.

I sat. I watched. I meditated upon the sorrows of the world, upon the oppression and pain.

People out for their nightly stroll walked by with a harsh bewildered rhythm. There is something in this landscape that dries the speech in your throat.

The solemn coloring of night drew on, the seep serene of the gumtrees, the long shadows of the mountains thrown across the grey trunks, dimly visible as they touched the farthest shore, the prancing harbor.

The voluptuous smooth hills beckoned and taunted. They have not a care.

Unlike me.

I wished for the moon, but she was dark to me, silent, hidden in her vacant interlunar cave.

I sat until the stars spread smatterings of diamond dust across the universe. I absorbed the agony without end.

It is time. 

I wrenched open the door to my cabin. Fisted the remote. Flicked on the news.

Same sad story. We can’t go back. We can’t move on.

The pandemic has cast a long shadow. But unlike the shadows from the setting sun, this long shadow will not disappear come evening.

WORDS: 225
FCA

REFERENCES:

Thomas Gray - poet
Craig Powell - poet
Walt Whitman - poet

TWO ADDITIONAL QUOTES:

The end of the day is near when small men make long shadows. Confucius

You can't anticipate history. It's only when you look back you see what the Romans did, and what various other empires did, what the British Empire did. We're now beginning to see the long shadow that it created, so one must be hopeful and say that what's going on in Asia, that what's going on in the Middle East, that all these various areas of conflict, that they will pass and move onto another area. But it would seem that the natural order of things is there is this cyclic behavior of destruction followed by a calm period. Roma Tearne

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