DD Writers Jam Fest: Kick Off Open Thread

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Phew! Finally!!

Welcome to a few days of silliness and, hey, maybe I’ll learn something. Heh.

UPDATE (noon-ish CDT) ALERT! The very first Round Robin is now up!

DD Writers Jam Fest… a five days Docudharma exclusive (!) Writer’s… uhm … focus group? no… er, Workshop? well, sorta, maybe. Free For All? hmmm, yah.

Okay the main thing we’ve agreed to do is a Round Robin.  We’ll see if some of the other stuff comes together…. it’s up to us, you. Shake it up in the comments.

DATES: Wednesday through Sunday, August 12 – 16th, 2009

WHERE: Here, mostly, but also in your Brain, CPU or Journal

WHO: You. Everybody. Dharmanoids. Whoever wants in, jump in (as long as you play nice). You don’t have to be a “Writer”, no ID card or credentials art the door required. No Registration Fees either

HOSTED BY: moi but it’s a community thing

REWARDS? PRIZES? MEGA BONUSES? Er, no. Free ponies though!

So what’s this Round Robin thing? Fun. Da Rulz TBA. Well. I forgot where I was for a minute. “Rules” are just the standard issue Rules of Docudharma: “be excellent to each other”.

Here’s the links to the previous brainstorming, which might give you a little of background of how this Jam Fest came about: Part One and Part Two.

I’d like to add that Docudharma has some ongoing Series for writers (and readers) here … in particular, Robyn posts Muse in the Morning every morning. Robyn celebrates the Muses and encourages everyone to contribute their talent there anytime.  

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. ~Isaac Asimov

I’m a little slow this morning, getting this off the ground, but too bad! I’m on vacation!!! dammit! lol.

I’ll let this be an Open Thread for now. I gotta go create the Round Robin Starter Kit. (DONE!)

Be excellent.

UPDATE. Okay so basically, the idea here is twofold.

ONE is… just write. Put “DD Writers Jam Fest” in your tags. You can also plop the Jam Fest image Banner into the body of your Essay if you like. Creative writing, or Instructional Essay or Op-Ed or whatever seems suitable to you. Have at it.

Jay Elias has a draft Essay up now where he invites critique. That counts!

Oh! Also, this lovely piece of fiction from Translator.

And, from Ministry of Truth, we have Jam Fest Poetry Edition.

Early bird Diane W  snuck one by me with her fictional essay this morning, Hundred Man Chess. I think it’s fiction! lol. It’s good, go read it.

TWO is the Round Robin.  The very first Round Robin is going on now!

Here I am robbing the gems from the original inspirational post from ek last week.  What the heck. Why not. They were greeeeat!!

Vent Hole / ek hornbeck

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Hmmm….. / undercovercalico

It was a hot, humid, hazy, night in Memphis and the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife and serve it up with some barbeque sauce or deep fry it and reflect on your momma’s kitchen in your little Mississippi hamlet where the boys played football and hunted and the girls knew how to twirl you around their manicured fingers like so and the old men sighed and watched and the women said,”Please Jesus don’t let that girl get pregnant and if she does let it be that fine mayor’s son”…..

oooooh, that’s some fancy writin’ there / Caribou Barbie

“It was a dark and stormy night, although the storm was not caused by global warming, which is a ridiculous invention of the liberal scientific elites whose hatred of this great country of ours drives a stake through the ol’ proverbial hearts there of our brave fighting men and women, upon whose backs we’re heapin’ the oppressive yoke of socialism, like a hunter strugglin’ to carry a moose across the socialistic tundra of Russia, or also possibly Sweden.”

without my Good Pen even / Lady Libertine

It was a dark and stormy night all across the land and no one had left any lights on. It was all nothing but sporadic pockmarks of flashlights, fireflies, and Bic lighters, while the rain fell constant and steady like war like terror like nameless childless wombdrops falling silently then softly landing with a little plop sound into wells of puddles that pooled and swirled around dams of plastic THANK YOU COME BACK AGAIN wrinkled wads of Never that would clog the night and block off the ever rippling path to Morning.

The heat fell in blankets almost as heavy as the rain even though it was nighttime and all the wet in the world could offer no protection.

It was the kind of storm that you knew you knew, like a favorite song from high school but you couldn’t quite get the words back.

But you remember.

twas a / RiaD

dank & dreary year, deary when imagination left the world. it scuttled away, riding in birchbark boats atop rivers of despair. they didn’t even try to catch it before it left the land. sucked down thru whirled pools into snakeholes that writhed their way to the core of the earth. every now and again one will trip on a hole, grown wider than the rest, fall to his knees & have a flash! of insight, a glimmer of grok. & then he rises & it falls away like the dust he brushes from his pants.

Kyle hated the forward air lock, / Something The Dog Said

He knew it was exactly the same size as the primary one down by the docking ports. He knew because he had measured it with a laser measure himself. While there could be no difference in size, there was something which was not the same. More often than not, when entering the lock, he would bang the life support pack on the upper edge of the door way.

This was not a good thing. At that point you had two choices, step back inside, take the pack off and start the pre-EVA inspection list again, or continue and hope nothing had broken lose, praying you would be able to hit the emergency represurization button as you heard the deadly hiss of a broken seal leaking your vital air away.

Neither was really acceptable, so Kyle usually went with trusting his reflexes. Which is not to say he was not careful every time, hoping he would not have to take even this small level of risk. Bending to enter the lock, he stepped forward. Bang! The upper edge of the life support pack hit the frame of the air lock.

“Damn it!” he swore.

“Come again, EVA Leader?” said Ellen House the Comms officer for this space walk.

“Ah, nothing, Comms.” said Kyle, “Just a little mike check”

“Well we have you five by five Leader, so try not to swear into an open mike, okay?” laughed the Comms officer.  

Fuckity damn damn fucking fuckity! I simply cannot compete with such stellar writing skillzorz! / Randgrither

It was not a dark and stormy night, the rain fell upside down while the sun shone brightly just to piss everyone off, except when it was flying sideways like a fuck ungiven (for it is an illegally surveilled bedroom that our scene lies), whining eternally along the housetops like an over-trafficked Homeland Security radio frequency, and boring the living shit out of militant liberal ex-military misanthropic computer geek housewives experiencing their 118th menopausal 4am hot flash.

.