Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Tuesday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.
This week’s capture shows rows of purple heather filling the bottom half of the images and receding out to the horizon and a single tree that is set against a pale blue and slightly washed-out sky.
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading the tales you spin. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their masterpieces.
As I continue to struggle with motivation and find myself mostly tired at the end of each day, a curse I normally feel in the waning days of autumn but so foreign at this time of year, I wonder when inspiration will return.
Outside of work, where contrary to everything else I have found a new groove. I find myself on the couch binging Netflix until the wee hours of the morning. Covering the entire five seasons of The Last Kingdom, a BBC/Netflix series based on Bernard Cornwell’s epic series of novels, The Saxon Stories/Chronicles over the last two weeks.
I have mixed feeling about historical fiction. I am impressed with writers who can research a place and time in history and build an entire world around it. Skillfully inserting fictional characters into the backdrop of real historical events. Seamlessly meshing fictional characters into the lives of those who came before us. For many, it is our only glimpse into our history, our past.
My mother is a voracious reader, even in her 80’s she reads just about anything she can get her hands on. As a child, I remember shelves filled with books she’d read. Those shelves themselves only a small portion of what she’d read, the precious few she wanted to keep and read again. Now most of what she reads resides on her Kindle.
She is a huge fan of historical fiction. In the 1970’s I remember her waiting for the next installment of John Jakes, Kent Family Chronicles (aka The American Bicentennial Series) series to publish. I never read the books myself but she was a devout fan of the historical genre. Many of the books she read such as Gabaldon’s Outlander series or Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, taking her back in time to her familial roots in England and Ireland.
But historical fiction is a double edge sword. While many of the tales open our hearts and minds to history they also bastardize it. In the moment, the reader knows the stories to be fiction. Authors like Cornwell, who was driven by a need to tell a history that he believes is absent in Britain even provides context in his series to allow the reader to parse the history from the fiction.
Years ago, when I was at university, I discovered Anglo-Saxon poetry and became hooked on that strange and often melancholy world. For some reason the history of the Anglo-Saxons isn’t much taught in Britain (where I grew up) and it struck me as weird that the English really had no idea where their country came from. Americans know, they even have a starting date, but the English just seemed to assume that England had always been there, so the idea of writing a series about the creation of England was in my head for a long time.
Bernard Cornwell, from interview with Emerson College, text taken from Wikipedia.
However, as these novels become part of the cultural landscape the tales become interwoven into that history, romanticizing them. I think of the conversations I’ve had with people over the years who can’t separate fiction from history. Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code is one of these novels where I have listened to people talk of fiction as reality. As time passes the fiction begins to creep into history even more and the truths of our past blend into the fantasy until only the historians hold the truth.
That said I enjoyed the series, although I am not certain I will watch the movie follow-up movie The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die that was created to end the series. It does not appear to have been written based on Cornwell’s novels but rather as a vehicle for Netflix to wrap the series up in a bow for the masses, disregarding so much of the history that provides the stories backdrop and that of England herself. In this instance, I will stick to the novels.
My Leafs managed to get out of the first round of the playoff for the first time since 2004. Hopefully exorcising the ghosts of the past. Even better the Boston Bruins, the so-call greatest team of all time based on the best regular season point total in league history were unceremoniously bounced by the Florida Panthers. My disdain for Marchand and the Bruins makes this almost as sweet as the Maple Leafs’ victory.
This week in music I re-discovered another classic from my youth, U2’s Rattle and Hum. The follow up to The Joshua Tree, one of the greatest albums ever recorded. When Love Comes to Town, the B.B. King collaboration results in one of the greatest Rock and Roll moments of all time.
Five Word Weekly Challenge
Qué sera sera | A coming-of-age tale written by Sadje at Keep It Alive.
Imposter | A conspiracy theorist nightmare with a twist by Paula at Light Motifs II.
Four Line Fiction Challenge
Okay | Writer Ravenclaw catches our imagination as the woman in the image prepares to soar, to live.
The blank spaces here are a product of that lack of motivation I describe above.
Next week…
Look for the usual features, Five Word Weekly, Four Line Fiction. I said it last week and like a broken record will say it again… Hopefully, I find inspiration this week.
Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, I will post five random words to 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.
Here are your prompt words for the week of May 1st, 2023:
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.
Welcome to another edition of T-Shirt Wisdom Wednesday for April 26th, 2023. This hump day feature is exactly what it sounds like. Every other Wednesday (bi-weekly) I will post a graphic that is funny, poignant, witty, honest, crude, toothsome, with bite, or just plain old ridiculous. Some I’ll have plagiarized directly from a chest near you. Others may not have been spotted in the wild but they probably should be out there.
Never underestimate the importance of a well-placed (or not) comma.
I feel that as bloggers we should all understand this one.
Suggestions are always welcome. If you come across something you think is worthy of being pasted across someone’s chest and paraded around publicly jot it down and send me a message. If it makes the cut I will whip up a graphic design template and use it in a future post. Any suggestions used will include a shout-out and link to your blog on the week it posts.
Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Tuesday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.
This week’s image is a monochromatic capture of a woman standing on a cable-stayed pedestrian bridge wearing a trench coat and Doc Marten-styled boots. She appears to defy gravity as she stands on the curb, leaning forward at about a 30-degree angle on her tiptoes.
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading the tales you spin. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their masterpieces.
Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, I will post five random words to 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.
Here are your prompt words for the week of April 24th, 2023:
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.
I knew it was going to be one of those weeks when I woke up to the snow pictured in my “From 29°C to WTF?” post and it did not disappoint.
The night I posted that entry my wife got hit in the head with a steel rod. It seems a co-worker didn’t secure the item properly when they were putting it away and when she went to grab a box it bounced up and hit her above her left eye. She was lucky not to lose an eye but has been suffering with headaches all week since. Likely a concussion that has kept her home and on the couch. To make things worse she also picked up a nasty cold.
At the same time, it is one of the more hectic weeks at work. The staff bid on the lines they would like to work for the next six months. Although I am not directly involved in the bid process, I am responsible for entering the results into our scheduling system. You would think this to be straightforward but it involves a bleep-ton of massaging the data to ensure the upload goes smoothly. If I were building schedules.
I’d start with a master that includes the full staff complement. First, I’d determine what staff require static lines such as those working static Monday to Friday lines or those accommodated schedules. Once that part of the schedule has been determined I move to the biddable schedule and as we never operate at full complement, I’d begin removing extra lines from the master schedule to ensure a balanced distribution of staff across the entire schedule. This would avoid creating areas with overstaffing and others where we operate short.
Unfortunately, that is not how these schedules are built, instead we build the bid schedule first and then add the static lines. The problem is nobody seems to be aware of who is not bidding so it becomes my responsibility to figure out who is missing from the bid schedule and build their static lines and accommodated schedules. It is an inefficient way of assembling a massive jigsaw puzzle that invariably leads to holes in the schedule and people being missed. Admittedly, it is exacerbated by the fact that I am new to the role, and it is my first time working the back end of the scheduling process.
None of this helps as for the last week to ten days I feel like I’ve been mired in the mud. My motivation is low and my mind is focused on other things. The cost of living, my daughter’s summer baseball schedule, ongoing car problems and of course my wife’s health are all weighing on my mind. Oh yeah, and that damned snow that has reared its ugly head again after a week of summer weather in April!
So it has been nothing but vegging in front of the TV and listening to music. I have spent countless hours watching the Leafs, Blue Jays and the Netflix show “The Last Kingdom” or listening to homegrown artist JJ Wilde.
Five Word Weekly Challenge
Blissful… | The joy of spending time with family and friends and a trip to the zoo by Paula at Light Motifs II.
Riddle of the Fox | Paula at Light Motifs poses an interesting riddle in her post.
Writer Ravenclaw also posted a warning for our fox friend in the comment section of the Four Line Fiction post.
More highlights from Greg’s Blog…
Around the Blogosphere…
Next week…
Look for the usual features, Five Word Weekly, Four Line Fiction and T-Shirt wisdom Wednesday. I said it last week and will say it again… Hopefully, some more new posts too.
After last week’s record-breaking heat the last two days I have woken up to this… Snow and temperatures hovering around the freezing point.
WTF!?!?!?
Just when you think that winter is behind us April reminds us that she can be an unpredictable and finicky one when it comes to weather. At least there hasn’t been much accumulation of the white. Don’t get me wrong, 29°C was nice but I’d be happy if we just got back to more seasonal spring weather!
Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Tuesday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.
This week’s image is a portrait of a red fox set against snow and sparse winter bramble. Its red fur is flecked with white snowflakes as it stares intently, with ears fully cocked, at something out of frame to the animal’s right.
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading the tales you spin. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their masterpieces.
Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, I will post five random words to 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.
Here are your prompt words for the week of April 17th, 2023:
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.
Greg's Blog 