Writers Group

[bels]

Alright, that's it, you're off this assignment and (love you both we will try again when you have more time)

I'm tagging in and . Lets go to work boys.

Anyone else who wants a piece of this please get involved. If you don't know what this is it's a fun, quick writing exercise where you down a coffee/beer/jasmine tea/milkshake and write a quick <500 piece inspired by whatever is kicking round in WAYWT. We post them in the WICTW thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=276&p=10351#p8273

Active Duty:
Freddie "Smiles" Avogadro
Ian "The Bird" Flintstone

Awaiting Orders:
Sister Ray
amikrumpingnow
Inherently
FeministFatal
rjbman
bela
Molasses
Jerminal
Soundclip
ab167
Major John
Ramseams
RycePooding

AWOL:
Schiaparelli
charybdis
Stingray Sam

R&R:
Odradek
3

[thatbiglake]

nn

[thatbiglake]

nn

[bels]

[bels]

flipping my shit eternally and forever.

[RycePooding]

Cast iron or non stick?

[vgtbls]

Unrelated to whatever's going on up there, but I'm taking a course in Fiction Writing this semester! I hope I don't hate it.

[Vaeltaja]

Picking up the English major, so I guess writing is more important (beyond a personal) now.

How important do you guys find fonts to be in stories? Usually I just write in the default font (i.e. Times New Roman). Obviously, a small detail, but some people think it can add a certain feel to the piece. I sometimes debate if I should change my font right before I turn a story/poem/something in.

[vgtbls]

I think that an author really really needs to have his or her shit together before messing around with fonts. You don't want a reader to see words and fonts, you want them to see characters and details and actions. Time New Roman or Georgia is what I use.

[copknocks]

i write poetry that i suppose i will have to start posting here

[RycePooding]

YOU HAVE TO!

Times New Roman or whatever the New Yorker uses.

[copknocks]

here's a poem

[RycePooding]

So I'm editing stories for my MFA application and would really like someone who reads a lot to read a short story I wrote (~10 pages double spaced) and give me some CC. I will buy you a coffee and/or beer whenever I find you.

Furthermore, if anyone has anything they want eyes on, I'd be happy to look at stuff and give feedback.

[vgtbls]

Ryce, I'd be down for it. I myself have to write a 10-20 page fiction piece by Thursday and the more feedback the better. Currently panicking on even basic ideas. Oh creative writing, you vague bastard.

[yoyobeat]

Here's something I wrote today, no proof-reading or nuffin'. Nor is it meant to be finished--just a slice of some longer story. I like including aspects of clothes in with the writing. Friend and I were walking with umbrellas earlier and I got a heavy clockwork orange jizz. So that's where this came from. I would appreciate feedback if you have any.

The taller of two forms walking purposefully down the street kept something tucked beneath its arm like a sinister folded newspaper. It wore, as you could see briefly each time the pair passed beneath a streetlight, a yellow corduroy topcoat with shearling lining, a perfect tailored fit. Lugsoled boots of tough cordovan leather gleamed faintly with moonlight. If one had inspected the footwear closely, a hundred scratches would have become dully apparent, most buffed now to thin scars.

The shorter figure wore the same corduroy coat--flawlessly contoured to his body--and a pair of trousers in wool flannel, rumpled and hemmed high to the ankle. "To avoid bloodying my trews," he had once said to a curious acquaintance in his Shoreditch inflection. British by location, but not birth, the pair was. But their clothes were certainly of British make, purchased with cash at the Row's finest shops: Holland and Sherry for the coats, Gieves & Hawkes for the shirts and trousers. Boots from Church's and Cleverly, respectively. Then taken to a backstreet cobbler to add steel toes and heavy lug soles.

It was beginning to rain. The shorter young man held out a few fingers to cup the droplets falling from the clouds. He untucked the long stick from under his arm and unfolded the umbrella skyward.

"Put it back," said his companion, whose own umbrella remained firmly under-arm. And the shorter man did, inexplicably. The two of them pressed onward in the deepening rain, the light of occasional cabs and neon signs reflecting against the wet street.

* * *

An old man with a blank notebook laid before him looked up as a tray of tea and biscuits clacked gently on the table. He had fallen asleep again. "Come here, Sylvia," he said, wrapping her head in his mottled arms. His wife had long gray hair as fine as fishing line, with a beautiful smile that was always genuine. He felt the mole on her temple press against his cheek. "Come sit with me," he said, and made room for her in the large leather armchair that had worn with age as warmly as the couple. The fire crackled as the rain outside intensified.

* * *

The pair was sopping wet but showed no indication of slowing their brisk pace, nor putting up their steel-tipped umbrellas to shield themselves from the rain. Their coats, strangely, seemed mostly dry. But their long black hair, cut shoulder-length in the same style, flung water from side to side as they strode, like horses' tails flicking flies.

There was a homeless man lying on a cardboard box under the overpass they came to shortly. A nearly empty cup lay beside his head, which was turned away from the men towards the wall. He was asleep and motionless--defenseless. The shorter man turned his ice-blue eyes towards the contents of the cup and pulled out two pound-notes, folding them roughly and dropping them in the cup. A derisive grunt from the taller figure. "Nobody ever did it for us, lookit, and we turned out just fine," he said.

The icy eyes flicked back to the homeless man's slumbering outline.

"True enough," said the shorter man. "But if they 'ad, maybe things would 'ave turned out different."

[yoyobeat]

Not sure what you mean , can you clarify?

[rjbman]

[vgtbls]

[schiaparelli]

hey, i'm back from the bench and willing to be drafted into active writing duty for WICTW
secretly still proud of my first and only WICTW submission

[vgtbls]

Hey guys! I wrote a short piece for an assignment I wanted to share because I haven't shared any of my fiction. The prompt was to write about a real story: groups of clowns are terrorizing neighborhoods in California towns. They hang out on the streets at night. Here's my short story titled "Paint".

[JewTurk]

I know this may seem out of place but I figure it couldn't hurt to ask.

I have a short story project coming up and I was looking for some general advice on getting started/flintstone.

[rjbman]

flintstone can come from anywhere. Think about all the people on the street... don't you ever conjure up this false idea of who that person is? Secrets their life may or may not hold? Though it might just be a fleeting thought, it's a great place where imagination could strike.

What about topics you ponder personally? Use them as a basis for the story, and build up something around them. Like, say, clothes. Maybe someone is trying to figure out just what level of consumerism is Acceptable and Okay, and what borders Unhealthy Obsession. BAM! Story.

As for actually starting, some people like to plan out the whole story on paper ahead of time, and write with that in mind. Personally I have an idea of where it will go but I just start writing and see what ends up happening.

[vgtbls]

The three most vital elements in a story are a character, a conflict, and a choice. All of them are interlinked and hold up everything else.

I think the easiest thing to start with is a character. I steal characters from people I've met. In my opinion it's easier to do with someone you don't know as well as, say, your best friend. That type of personal knowledge is too specific and deep and will cloud the rest of your story.

Flesh that person out until you have a good feeling for their motivations, their desires, and their personality. That person is then faced with a conflict and makes a decision that changes them from who they used to be. I had a teacher say "your story takes place on the most important day of your life."

Truth be told there's a million approaches.

[Iliam]

[bels]

In addition to the great advice given above, I'd say don't sit around waiting for flintstone/the right mood/the perfect anything. Just go for it and keep at it. Write much much more than you need so you can kill the 90% that sucks and be left with the 10% that works. You want to have so much good stuff that you can kill it and not even be stressed because there's loads more where it came from.

If you're worried about getting started, why not do a "What is care tags wearing" just to get your groove on.

[germinal]

[smiles]

what if i just like sentences and not stories.

[BIGBEE]

I was talking to my teacher about how to improve my writing and he suggested applying what I was learning in class to writing about something I’m interested in. So I thought that I could put some thoughts I had about wtaps and w)taps onto the page What I’m trying to do is make an argument about whether wtaps is or isn’t a lifestyle brand. I’m probably going to post the first draft so criticism of the writing is greatly appreciated so I can improve my writing/my argument in the future. Right now I don’t think I’m defining how the brand fits this idealized man/ lifestyle he lives well enough, also I think I’m going to remove this bit about stylisticsspace, he doesn’t fit wtaps as well as I thought when I was planning this. Hoping to post this in the actual wtaps thread when it’s done. Trying to not fill the wtaps thread with pure pic spam LOL. Trying to make the wtaps thread the best it can be :P

I was going through the wtaps thread earlier and there was a discussion about whether wtaps was a “lifestyle brand or not” and I wanted to add to that discussion. My overall opinions are that wtaps is a lifestyle brand but w)taps is not. I’m going to define what a lifestyle brand is and how I define these lifestyles use stylistics space for examples of what these men wear. Milspex and Stylisticsspace are the two biggest wearers of w)taps and wtaps in general. I’m going to use stylisticsspace to help define the wtaps man. This is because there is no one wearing all or mostly wtaps (that I know of). I’ll include an album of stylistics and mix it with pics of the yosuke kubozuka editorial, which in my opinion is the best example of someone wearing all wtaps, so hopefully you will see that stylistics is close enough.

First I’d like to make an assumption that there is a distinction between wtaps (brand after ~’08) and w)taps. This topic really deserves its own post (I’ll give my thoughts on this later hopefully…)

So to me a lifestyle brand is a brand that tries to sell a desireable lifestyle to consumers. The way I’m going to define this lifestyle is by first defining the wtaps and w)taps man. The lifestyle these idealized men live is the lifestyle the brand is trying to sell. So in order for the brand to be a lifestyle brand the lifestyle portrayed has to be sellable.

To me the w)taps man is not Japanese, but with a very strong interest in Japanese culture. The w)taps man dreams of being a navy seal stationed in japan, but isn’t cut out for special forces (most people aren’t) In his adoration for the military he wears a large amount of military gear. He probably plays airsoft or paintball or some military simulation.

W)taps fits this lifestyle to me because of the distance between the real military surplus and the reinterpretation. W)taps would take a piece of military clothing or gear and change some things about it, but the overall form would be very reminiscent of the original. For instance the w)taps x porter collab in 2002, it was heavily influence by the Gregory um-21. What characterizes the um-21 is a lot of straps, modularity, impracticality and the instruction book(I’ll repost this, it’s in the wtaps thread). The two look different, but those characteristics are still in the w)taps x porter collection. The whole collection is modular and the straps are still there but toned down. Other things are amplified like the lack of practicality (special force never used it because it was so heavy). Stylisticsspace owns the rolling luggage thing (need to find the real name) and it is so heavy that it can’t be brought on a plane. Milspex owns a lot of the collection and he notes that some of the zipper garages are oriented up so that they catch the rain rather than deflect it. So the w)taps man is close to being a real soldier, but he isn’t quite there.

The reason w)taps isn’t a lifestyle brand to me is because the lifestyle of the w)taps man is not desirable to the vast majority of people. So the brand (w)taps) doesn’t sell on this point. Rather it sells on other points such as interesting design and authenticity.
The wtaps man has a more desirable lifestyle to the average consumer. The wtaps man was in the military and still has his old uniform, but it was modified by him throughout his service. He wears it sometimes, but most of the times he dresses like an average person. He managed to stay in the country he served in after the war and settled down and married a woman in the country.

To fit this man into the life style I want to focus on the modification bit, this is exaggerated by wtaps in my opinion. To use an example take the double-breaster bomber jacket trench coat thing from this season. It takes the fabric of the bomber jacket and some of the connotations behind the garment and applies these to a new form. The orange lining says escape and evasion on it, when the orange lining/ blood chit is showing on a bomber jacket is showing this means the pilot crashed and is in the midst of escape and evasion. To reuse the porter collab example, this would be like if they took the um21 and made a jacket based on this.

The same thing is found, but less drastically the Extreme prejudice vests/jackets. The ones that say extreme prejudice on the back and have a bunch of added zippers. The soldiers in Vietnam added zippered pockets to their uniforms; I have an example from a militaria forum I will find in the future when I’m not busy. This example also has writing in the on the back, but the writing is more subdued/harder to see. (In the future I’d like more examples for both brands, feel like this part is weak :S)

Any criticism appreciated, my main goal of writing this is to try and improve my writing while, hopefully, contributing something interesting to the wtaps thread beyond just pic spam.

Sort of ashamed that I wrote all of this, I feel pretty uncool right now. LOL

UM21 Manual
http://soldiersystems.net/blog1/wp-cont ... manual.pdf

wtaps x porter manual


Stylistics/yosuke


Album of pics mentioned + pictures of modified soldiers uniforms

[yoyobeat]

[huhuslum]

I write poems by drawing a long line through a newspaper page. Whatever words go through the line go in the poem. Here is one i found from a few years a go. I think they are hilarious because they have no meanings, but seem as if they have many.

Gerry challenges Sunday
Eight year old holiday daunting
People pains
A normal upbringing
A secure enivroment
A web of child abuse
Gerry feels confident.