New Writing Prompt + Books in Celebration
On the road to spring!
Dear Reader,
After celebrating love in last week’s newsletter, it’s time today to celebrate the launch of the new writing prompt and the new Medium feature dedicated to book authors! Let’s get right into it!
It took me a while to come up with this new prompt, but it’s finally here! As the subtitle of this newsletter suggests, this time I want to set us all on the road to a spring that I hope will be sweet, flowery and full of love.
The prompt:
Write a poem, in verse or prose, or an essay or short fiction, celebrating the arrival of spring, as if to help revive souls bruised by winter and the long cold, rainy days.
To participate:
# Follow Scribe, me, and subscribe to the newsletter.
# Submit your piece (unpublished, finalized draft) to the publication, specifying in the subtitle that it is in the context of the prompt. You can use this wording: “Writing Prompt — On the road to Spring”.
For participants who are not yet writers for Scribe, they are invited to follow the classic process specified in the guidelines. In the two pieces to be sent, they just have to include the one they want to submit for the prompt.
How it works:
Stories and poems will be published as normal submissions. The deadline for submissions is March 20, 2023, the first day of spring!
The announcement of the four texts that I will consider the most successful, touching, and moving, well you know me, will be made on April 1st, and no this is not a joke!
Their writers will receive, according to their wishes and on a first-come, first-served basis, a paper copy of Caroline Mellor’s poetry collection (in the form of a voucher for an order on Book Depository, with free delivery worldwide) or a copy of The Embrace of Dawn with a personalized note from me that I will send you from France.
After the announcement of the laureates, I will create and publish a collection (in the form of a list on Medium) of all the participating texts, so that everyone can read and reread them whenever they want.
That’s it for the prompt, I hope you like the idea and that it already makes you want to run your fingers on your favorite keyboard!
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who supports me on Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to offer books and imagine other rewards for the writers who make Scribe shine every day.
Since I just talked about books, it’s a perfect segue to now mention the exciting announcement Buster Benson made this Wednesday! If you’ve ever written and published a book, you can now apply to Medium to get an author badge and have your book featured on your profile page!
Everything is explained in the article. I think it’s a nice little extra for those who want to promote their book and link to what they write here. I imagine you already have some questions about this new feature so I invite you to read the many answers to the article, Buster brings a lot of interesting elements. What’s cool is that this is probably a first step towards a more serious verification of honest writers on Medium! Fingers crossed!
Since I know that some of you have already published a book, I want to do something to give them more space on the Scribe homepage too. I was thinking of replacing the Resources page in the publication navigation with a Books page in which I will publish a collection of your stories that introduce your book or announce its release, like this one by Caroline Mellor. What do you think about this?
This week on Scribe, Sam Aureli crafted a poem inspired by his visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and his encounter with Birk, a mystical creature dressed in wood. His text is once again a masterpiece: Where Does Your Happiness Lie? Artemis Sullivan has taken us once again into the depths of her soul, and each time we come out shaken: Gaze Fixed on Light. Micah Josiah told us about his home. It sounds simple, but go read his story, it is extremely deep and moving: 3** Lee Drive. As always, the weekly digest awaits you with the other gems of the week.
On my side, I published a story about my new stature as a still poor (but happy) entrepreneur, then a form of prose that I had first explored here with foxes and that I repeated this time with a grey heron. I like the idea of writing something in one block to try to better capture the reader’s attention and hold them in a kind of poetic bubble for a brief moment.
Well, I’ve talked enough for today! As always, thank you for reading, and good luck with future writing sessions! 💛
Weekly Digest
A Pilgrim Seeking, by Ken Martin. Goodbye Isn’t Good Enough, by Bradley J Nordell. I Await Your Return, by Misbah Sheikh. Tinfoil Heart, by Nanette Schieron. Dawn Arrives, by Alan Henley. Alone at My Desk, by Bob Metivier. Where Does Your Happiness Lie? by Sam Aureli. Puzzles of Navigation, by Nik Hein. Gaze Fixed on Light, by Artemis Sullivan. Who Will Remember? by Lark Morrigan. 3** Lee Drive, by Micah Josiah. Pretty Words Weren’t Enough, by Louise Foerster. Winter’s End, by Caroline Mellor. Three Years, by Samantha Lazar. A Long Overdue Love Letter, by Sofia Isabel Kavlin. Diaphanous, by Connie Song. A Mindful Thank You, by Sylvia Wohlfarth. This Is Now, by Erika Burkhalter. It Awaits, by Q. Imagine.
Community
Want to support me, the publication, and its great writers? Join me here 💛 Dream of being published in Scribe and reaching an audience of over 17,000 engaged readers? Submit your story ✨ Remember to subscribe to my profile so you don’t miss anything I write on Medium 💌 Finally, don’t forget to wander and be moved!