Flash Fiction February Submissions

As you may or may not have noticed, it is no longer February. But never fear! GUCW’s favourite monthly challenge is not all over and done with just yet.

As we get to compiling our anthology we are still in need of flash fiction stories for many of our daily prompts. So if any of you still have some work in the pipeline you have until mid-April to submit your stories for the anthology.

As well of stories we would love submissions of your artwork to accompany any pieces or simply artwork to decorate the anthology. You can use the prompts on the flash fiction page for inspiration but there will be a general “kitsch” feel to the anthology (-think cheesy 90’s pop).

Submit your work to: gucreativewritingsociety@gmail.com

Find the prompts here: Flash Fiction February 2k17

Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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**Days/ Prompts that haven’t been written on yet:**

22/02/17

Non-binary, pride,

 

24/02/17

Inconceivable, Iridescent,

“You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”- Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

 

27/02/17

Negligible,  Damask,  

“This world that we’re a-livin’ in, is mighty hard to beat; You git a thorn with every rose, but ain’t the roses sweet!”- Frank Lebby Stanton

GUCW Board 2016-17

As you may or may not know we had our AGM last month and decided upon our board for the 2016-17 session of Creative Writing Society. We won’t be officially in charge until September (when the next semester of Uni begins) but in the meantime we thought we’d better introduce ourselves:

 

 

Maura Kenny

Hi I’m Maura, and I’m going into my third year at university, studying physics and astronomy. I enjoy reading and writing and I really love the creative writing society! I adore musicals (especially Les Mis) and superheroes and Harry Potter and space and queer lit and I base my opinion of a restaurant/pub/café on how nice their nachos and/or mac and cheese is. I take mac and cheese very seriously.

 

Heather Caldwell

Bored and raised in Scotland – descended from the MacFarlane clan who were thrown off their own land for stealing sheep. In my spare time  I enjoy reading, writing, little bit of drawing, and listening to music (especially Stevie Nicks). Physically very short and often have brightly coloured hair. Living at home because no flat is big enough for my book collection and imaginary dragon. 🐉

 

Hayley Rutherford

Oh no! Its her again… Don’t worry I’m about to go in to final year of Scottish Literature so I won’t be back after this. I’ll have to get all my mischief out during this session of creative writing. My favourite things are lifting and creative writing, which are surprisingly difficult to do at the same time. My reading habits are much like my dress sense you’ll either find me in a kilt or looking like Frankenstein’s monster.

Introducing the New Board!!

Tonight at our AGM we elected our new board members for our 2016-17 session of Creative Writing.

Here are our smiling faces!

 

Maura Kenny (left), Heather Caldwell (centre), Hayley Rutherford (right).

 

We look forward to getting creative with you all when September (and the next semester rolls round). In the meantime… we’ve got some awesome workshops to plan.

Calling All Creative Writers: We Need You!

As you may or may not have noticed it is no longer February however as we begin to wrap up this term you should know that our Flash Fiction February challenge is still on-going. We plan to compile an anthology of all the stories following the end of exams however in the meantime if you could please find some time to do the odd submission we would be eternally grateful.

Here are a list of the dates/prompts which have not been written on at all and are in dire need of some creative flourishes

20- connect, artificial, honour
21- theory, oranges, (picture of sheet music)
22- courtesan, horoscope, (painting of waterfall women)
23- ice-cream, banned, runaway
25- 1945, exhibit, (picture of Cleopatra)
26- lion, gravity, look
29- liminal, journey, (sound clip: Aphex Twin- Avril 14th)

 

And these are the dates/prompts which have only received one submission so far and could use a bit of tlc:

12- havoc, moonlight, summon
14- fortress, message, (picture of St. Valentine)                                                                               16- carrion, laces, “I am—yet what I am none cares or knows…”- John Clare
17- follow, rain, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”- Friedrich Nietzsche
18 –prisoner, arm, (painting of women on castle wall)
19- return, satisfaction, (signpost “La Belle Place)
24- erase, counter, (picture of hourglass and roses)
27- prepare, nowhere, (picture “It’s all lies darling”)
28- chrome, rare, (picture of map and compass)

You will have to look at the blog page to view the pictures/ sound clips properly. (which can be found here: (https://gucreativewriting.wordpress.com/…/flash-fiction-fe…/)

Flash fiction submissions can be sent to us via the box on the blog or sent to gucreativewritingsociety@gmail.com.

Thank you very much. Happy writing! :D

Reminder for POVEMBER

So November may be over but there’s still time to send us your poems! Anyone can enter, whether you attend our meetings or not :)

Feel free to go back over any of the prompts from previous days on the POVEMBER page, or else try out the ones from the 30th: ‘contemplate, press, end’. There’s a submission form on the POVEMBER page or else you can email your work along with your name and a title to gucreativewritingsociety@gmail.com

 

— Thanks to everyone who has submitted already, it’s been really fun reading all your work!

x

POVEMBER PAGE NOW ONLINE!

Hey all

Check out the page for POVEMBER now on the blog! Here you will find the daily poetry prompts. We’re looking to get as much work as possible on the blog so please submit anything you write – even if it’s just a humble haiku!

More info over at POVEMBER 

Please email all poems to gucreativewritingsociety@gmail.com and don’t forget to give us your name, prompts, any interesting hashtags and of course a title!

x

Download our Flash Fiction Anthology for Free!

Hey all

So after much ado our flash fiction anthology Microcuts is ready for download. Currently we have it in both pdf & iBooks format. Personally, I think it looks cooler if you view it through iBooks (free to download from the App Store) so please do give us your email address on the form below (or at our Flash Fiction February page) and we will email you the iBooks version for free (we’re trying to get it put on the iTunes Store right now).

Name(required)

Email(required)

Submit

Δ

Alternatively, you can quickly download the pdf version HERE: Microcuts

Everyone that contributed should be proud of their work & I’m happy that it’s finally finished! :)

Enjoy

x

FF Anthology Bios

Everyone who contributed to the FF anthology, fancy writing me a short bio of yourself? I want to have a list at the beginning like in last year’s anthology. Example:

John Smith is a third year Biology student. When he’s not making potions or poring over stats and figures, he likes to read science fiction books and drink brandy. He hopes to have some of his poems about plants published one day, but in the meantime he plans to make some dough as a lab researcher in Paris.

Louie Houston​ Hayley Rutherford​ Rachel Norris​ Louise McCue​ Annie Milburn​ Rut Neuschäfer Jane Jones​ Marcus Bechelli​ Paul Inglis​ Ailsa Philomel Williamson​ & everyone else who hasn’t sent one yet :) If you don’t want to do one, I’ll just list your name instead, but I think it’s a nice detail to have little bios.

Email to mariasledmere@outlook.com

Reminder! Get your submissions in for the Flash Fiction Feb anthology!

As the semester draws to a close and we fall suddenly into April, I thought it would be a good time to remind everyone that the final deadline for submitting work for the FFF anthology is the last day of April (midnight). Remember you can send in as many flash fiction pieces are you like – all will go on the blog. Then you choose up to 3 which will get put in the final ebook anthology. I have copied and pasted all of February’s prompts below to save you visiting the page again! If you’re stuck for ideas, use the tag cloud to your right to find related flash fiction pieces our members have already written. Remember, anyone can submit, even if you hardly ever attended the workshops. So get writing :D

2015

1.2.15: ecology, Shakespeare, technology

2.2.15: Pick a stereotype from the map found HERE and use it as a prompt (e.g. you could try to subvert or indeed reflect the stereotype).

3.2.15: evidence, underwater, amber

4.2.15:

 

wistful, deceit

5.2.15: 

accident, flashback

6.2.15: azure blue, fidelity, prophecy

7.2.15: 

breakfast, argument

8.2.14: 

curiosity, introvert

9.2.15:

reward, terror

10.2.15

mesmerise, longing

11.2.15: garden, consumer, time

12.2.15: apothecary, grey, puppy

13.2.15: 

flashbulb, sentry

14.2.15: soulmate, ink, journey

15.2.15:
Pick any song you like and from that song choose a lyric. Your flash fiction must contain this lyric somehow. 

16.2.15: 

lost, key

17.2.15: pancakes, knitting, sun

18.2.15: spatula, lizard, space

19.2.15: CLICK HERE

20.2.15:

Rain, Pitchfork

21.2.15:

denim, potassium

22.2.15: manic, paraphernalia, booth

23.2.15: 

mortality, fall-out

24.2.15: chiaroscuro, firefly, vertigo

25.2.15: bodies of water around the world (click here for photos)

middle, troll

26.2.15: Rorschach blot, haunted, glitter

27.2.15: Glasgow photos (then and now) – CLICK HERE

spider, treasure

28.2.15: printing press, waterfall, strawberry

Name(required)

Email

What were your prompts?(required)

Date of submission:(required)

Title of piece:(required)

Text(required)

Submit

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New Board & Inspiration Week

Dear all,

I am very pleased to announce that last night we elected our new board for the year 2015-2016. Votes were triple-counted and pretty close, so it was all very exciting. Here are the results:

President: Rachel Norris

Vice: Hayley Rutherford

Secretary: Ailsa Williamson

These are all members who have contributed a lot to the society through their presence at workshops and their submissions to the blog, so I am really pleased to be leaving GU Creative Writing in their hands!

As well as a book swap (I was chuffed to get Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love), we talked over some feedback ‘going forward’ into next year. Here are some general things that came up:

• There was an interest in bringing back ‘feedback sessions’ in workshops, where people can read our snippets of their own work and discuss it in the group. I think this could work well if done properly; we were thinking about people posting their page up online a few days before so people can read it and come to the workshop with ideas.
• Have a ten minute free-write in most workshops to give the opportunity to always come away with something productive!
• Showing people the blog in the first workshop so they can see how we work!
• Having ‘fun’ or more collaborative workshops such as Cut-Up Poetry and Map-Making earlier on to encourage new members to get involved as a group.
• More socials and trips!
• A workshop specifically on poetry in general, not just haiku (I’d love to see more poetry!).
• A workshop focused on creative writing with a distinctly Scottish flavour.
• Science Fiction workshop and more genre stuff in general.
• Perhaps getting in ‘specialist’ speakers.
• A writing for radio workshop? Also there was interest in screen and script writing.
• A possible workshop on the world of publishing and self-publishing.

I hope you are as excited about these ideas as I am; I think they will be really helpful for our future sessions! We know that not all of you have completed the feedback survey yet, so we’d really appreciate if you took 5 minutes to answer ten quick questions! CLICK HERE

The other thing I wanted to talk about is INSPIRATION WEEK (beginning 30th March). I feel like since it’s the end of the academic year it would be a nice moment to talk about our literary inspirations. These could be things we have read or films or plays we have seen that have somehow inspired our writing. Anything from The Simpsons to The Odyssey. I think it would be good to share your inspirations (Youtube clips allowed!) for everyone to see so I thought we could all list 5-10 of our inspirations and email them to gucreativewritingsociety@gmail.com so I can share them on the blog next week. How about it? :)

Don’t forget Flash Fiction February submissions remain open till the end of April, so if you want to be in the anthology, get them in soon!

Anyway, one more thanks for being a great wee group during my time as President!

Lots of love

Maria