A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 27
June 1, 2018
#FridayFragment: Ring
A short fiction fragment that happened on a Friday:
[image error]The ring felt heavy, smooth, and cold. It lay on her palm like a dead weight, gleaming up at her dully. How could she have borne this lump of metal on her finger all these years?
“So, you gonna trade it, or what?” the pawn broker’s voice cawed into her thoughts.
She looked up.
“That’s what I came here for, didn’t I.” The ring clicked on the marble surface of the counter.
“Three silver,” cawed the broker.
“No,” she said, all business no...
May 30, 2018
May 23, 2018
May 16, 2018
#WordlessWednesday (sort of): Froschi
Okay, a few words are necessary here: Project Unstick turned up a very old friend in a bag of stuffies in the basement. Froschi was a gift from a friend – she sewed him for me for my confirmation, when we were both in Grade 7. I didn’t even know I still had him! Steve was pleased to meet one of his forerunners.
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[image error]Me showing my new Froschi to my aunt
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May 15, 2018
Snippets from a Writer’s Conference: @WordLake
Word on the Lake was, once again, fantastic. I came home with my head stuffed with info, my feet hovering about two inches off the ground with the sheer buoyancy of inspiration.
Here are a few snippets, visual, inspirational or educational (the latter paraphrased in my own words from what stuck with me):
[image error]It’s not called “Word on the Lake” for nothing
[image error]That’s a beaver paddling around!
Ian Weir (screenwriter and novelist): “Give yourself permission to write. A lawyer goes to school for about nin...
May 10, 2018
Magic Listening Machines, or: Why I Love Fairy Tales
Today on Enchanted Conversations by Yours Truly:
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Magic Listening Machines or WHY I LOVE FAIRY TALESI did not hear my first fairy tales at the knee of my grandmother. Nor did someone read them to me as bedtime stories out of a venerable fat hardcover copy of Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales. No—I got my introduction to the Land of Faerie through the record player. That’s right, children: Once upon a time, in a world far away from that of today, stories were told by a magic machine. F...
May 8, 2018
This, That, Jealousy and Herding Cats
Steve guarding the old watering can (it’s a family heirloom)
I keep getting emails from WordPress these days: “Shenoptikus Caractacus [or whatever other name] is now following your blog. They will receive an email every time you publish a post. Congratulations.”
Oh dear, I think to myself, I wonder what Shenoptikus Caractacus thinks he’s getting into. Perhaps he started following because of the advertising on Enchanted Conversations’ newsletter, and expects regular erudite Editorial Pontifica...
April 25, 2018
April 20, 2018
The Editor Pontificates: Point of View
Very recently (as in, yesterday evening) I got bitten by the screenwriting bug – I want to learn how to do this. So this morning, in the course of a couple of hours of trawling the Internet, which included placing half a dozen holds on library books under the subject heading of “Motion Picture Authorship” (go figure – Library of Congress couldn’t assign it a sensible heading like “Script Writing”), I ran across a useful web page, “A Glossary of Screenwriting Terms and Film Making Definitions“...
