The Challenge

Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, five words will magically appear on Greg’s Blog at 5:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the word prompts. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece, a series of stand-alone projects, or an epic serial. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.

The Words

A Merry Christmas from Greg’s Blog and Five Word Weekly. This week, the word selections are inspired by the holiday season. Although the challenge does not adhere to a weekly theme, the group of words presented may occasionally share a common thread. You as the author can write about anything without being bound to a theme.

excitement | cocoa | feast | polar | goodwill

Rules and Guidelines

• Use as many of the weekly words as you see fit as long as each work contains at least one prompt. You can view the definition of each word at Merriam-Webster by clicking on the word in the text bar located below the word image.
• If writing multiple pieces, it is recommended (but not essential) that posts be published throughout the week keeping the daily volume of material manageable for your readers. Spreading out the posts will provide continuous content for your blog that will attract multiple visits and develop regular readers. Writing the prompts as a serial should supercharge that effect.
• There are no constraints to style (prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc…) or length but please try to keep it to something in the flash fiction realm. Nobody is getting paid here so save the novels for your publisher. Brevity is the key to success.
• You can use any variation of the words including different forms of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc…), varying definitions (i.e. hibernating bear or bear weight but not homophones like bare necessities), plural forms, tense, etc…
• When posting to your blog please add a pingback (link) to the Five Word Weekly challenge post and include the tags #gb5ww and #gmgblog on your post.
• Tell the world. It would be greatly appreciated if you shared the Five Word Weekly challenge post to your social media accounts.
• Post submitted to the Five Words Weekly challenge may be included in a weekly roundup post at Greg’s Blog and may appear on the Five Words Podcast currently in development. It is understood that all written works remain the property of the author.

Please reach out if you have questions or feedback about this challenge or anything of the content presented on Greg’s Blog. I look forward to reading what you write. Be creative, have fun and take the time to read, like, and comment on your fellow bloggers’ work.

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