Archived Workshops

I've been unable to write anything new for months. I tried a few whimsical ones for this prompt, then decided to rework on old CNF draft (started in a previous BG workshop). I've worked apartheid into it, inspired by the redacted/censorship concept in the prompt....

I have a big DECEPTICON. Most ANIMAL RITUAL goes into it. Destroyer god with one thousand INTERCHANGABLE PENISES and center of SNAILS. Gigantic ENIGMATIC TRANSFORMER. I’m sure glad I’m not trying to pass through airport security with this big ACTION FIGURE. Those of...

The movie director yells cut. "Cut!" the movie director yells. "Popeye" is supposed to be dead in this scene," the director screams. "But Popeye can't die," Popeye replies. The director shoots him dead. Pink Panther steps away for a cigarette break and says nothing....

(this is a redaction piece) I have a big DECEPTICON. Most ANIMAL RITUAL goes into it. Destroyer god with one thousand INTERCHANGABLE PENISES and center of SNAILS. Gigantic traumatic TRANSFORMER. I’m sure glad I’m not trying to pass through airport security with this...

All xxxxxxxxxxxxxx recollections xxxxxxxxxxxxxx are character xxxxxxxxxx distorted xxxxxxxx versions xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx that actually happened. Tempting xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to correct the record xxxxxxxx myself, I’m not going to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The point here is...

Geotraumas Birdstorms and similar phenomena became known as geotraumas, closing airports and pedestrian zones and certain zip codes of consciousness. Avian clouds spirited through vast swathes of sky, heaving and shifting in dark amoebas, their screams razoring the...

Fossilized Fused with a flat mental sky she charred hours with used, dead matches. All timid squalor, fussy haggling between impulse and intrusive clarity, wine doused her back into slatted mumble of day that drained her down the sink of another benign sunrise. A...

All recollections are character distorted versions that actually happened. Tempting to correct the record myself, I’m not going to . The point here is you deliberately framing the narrative in a way that is obviously a caricature of poison in the guise of fiction....

I thought Vlad was full of shit. Or just yanking the tail of another tourist. Guiding must get mundane as factory work. Anything to spice up and here we have a toothpick fish, a glass frog, jesus lizard, decoy spider, a capybara—the largest rodent in the world, tastes...

Tremors of silverfish twist through crevices in the Escomb church walls. Alive in the shadows. Centuries of insects slick with Saxon blood. My father pierces the brown air with his fist, meaning, let’s promenade through the graveyard. I take his arm. He whistles for...

good night moon good night father while you snore I spend the night traversing your mouth like a derelict vagabond on occasion resting by a jagged molar noticing how your breath smells like turpentine and death noting how your tongue resembles a salmon-colored dragon...

Everyone in town knew when the general store sank, that was the sign we were all watching for. Custer’s last stand and all that. George Wheely came out early one morning for some feed and found it halfway deep in the mud, sour candies, powdered milk, and live bait...

[NOTE: I got in here late and am trying to rework an old-ish CNF piece with new insights from the prompts and reading materials. I think it fits with the vibe, hopefully.] Marie Kondo haunts the woman’s closet and nags about whether any of these old T-shirts...

A week after the police arrested Father Sass in the Paradise Motel outside Port Hope for fiddling minors, my father drove us to the city to meet Father Joe at the train station. —Be nice to the man, give him the benefit of the doubt, our father said. —Can we hit...

Big Girls Know the Difference Between Fantasy and Reality My sister is at a sleepover, so Mom makes me banana pancakes with real maple syrup as a treat. The syrup tastes like it poured right out of a tree spout and onto my pancakes. Mom starts speculating about when...

Mirrors pawn the deviant out of anyone. Go ahead. Hotline coral lipstick over the muted thrush of festered gums. Someone a block away died harsh and blank as the soft peel of a flippant wind. Varicose cracks of the pavement cushioned him. Throngs tripped over the...

In Uruguay, a drug dog ate my reputation then gave me the mumps. Illegal feelings from an unsung deity, how she prayed with me, this goddess associated with dreams. Rucksack baggage, my dead uncle once called it, his pockmarked body surrounded by guns. A backpacker's...

I Dreamed That You Were Lost And then I woke and saw you through an angle of the mirror, your great falls of hair dripping purpleblack into the tub, your neck straining against the weight, the gravity, your muscles thrumming, the carotid swollen and blue, your entire...

1. Provided you can get out of bed, raise the blind and assess the range of hues in the day and your own temperature within the spectrum. Is it Payne’s and washed with your dissolving moss self, warm and wet against it--like your existential dream of the English...

Never have. Each one has a different way of showing it. Happened again today. An email from someone named Rachel. Like on Friends. It’s a birthday invitation for her husband. My writer friend’s ‘50th birthday bash’ — Who talks that way? I’ve never met Rachel. Why...

Enjoy all the wonderful work from Day 2!

Enjoy all the wonderful work from Day 1!