This afternoon I participated in a 24 hour short story writing contest sponsored by www.writersweekly.com (I think they have these contests twice a year.) As far as writing marathons go, this was much, much simpler than November Is National Novel Writing Month, although I suppose I shouldn't even compare the two--this contest was more like a 50 yard dash than a marathon (it took me about 2 hours rather than 30 entire days!) The hosts email all participants with the topic and word limit the day of the contest so people can't cheat and write their stories ahead of time. This time, the story (950 words or less) had to somehow address a situation where a woman is watching tv during a blizzard and then someone who had died 10 years before appears on the screen. I wasn't quite sure what to do with that, and ended up writing a weird little tale about a woman dying of hypothermia and hallucinating about her dead husband. It sounds pretty grim, but it was a lot of fun to write (I should mention that the woman, much to her dismay, winds up getting saved in the end. I couldn't quite bring myself to kill her off. One of my downfalls as a writer--I tend to be too nice to my characters; it's hard for me to let them suffer in peace. I'm getting better at it, but it's not easy).

It was an enjoyable writing day; I love contests/themed journals like this one where they give you certain hoops to jump through. It's nice to have a trigger, to see what emerges from it. I love it best when an idea for a story strikes me like lightning, out of the blue, but I really appreciate prompts, too. It's a cool way to get the juices flowing.

I have a poem in a beautiful new anthology, Proposing On the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems About Marriage, edited by Ginny Connors (Poetworks/Grayson Books). On February 9 at 2pm, I'll be giving a reading from the anthology with three other poets (all wonderful)--Judy Kronenfeld, Cecilia Woloch, and Sherman Pearl--at the Montclair Borders. The book would make a great Valentine's gift!

Today I went to register.com to register www.thebookofdeadbirds.com for my website upgrade (coming soon-ish to a monitor near you!)
They offered me some amusing alternative urls, including:

thebookofdeaderbirds
thebookofdeadflock
mythebookofdeadbirds
thebookofdeadanimals
thebookofdeadestbirds
thebookofdeadbirdsit
freethebookofdeadbirds
thevolumeofdeadbirds
greatthebookofdeadbirds

Almost as much fun as an anagram server!