Allyson Whipple

Category: writing

  • Two Recent Poetry Publications!

    Although I haven’t been devoting much time to poetry lately, some of the pieces I sent out earlier this year have been accepted and published. First, a poem called “Awake at All Hours” appeared in the most recent issue of Ardent! The piece was inspired by reading Eavan Boland (though is not an attempt at imitation), and is one of my final poems about insomnia (since soon after that, I quit having insomnia.

    And earlier this week, I got my copies of the 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar, which includes a piece of mine entitled “Traversing Houston by Bus.” Although you wouldn’t know it reading the poem, it was inspired by riding around on a party bus with the fabulous folks at D’Amico Dance and performing a west coast swing flash mob routine at various spots in the city. That was the day I started to love Houston, and I tried to capture that in the piece – the fact that the city still confuses me, but I’m finding things to adore about it. I’m really happy with that poem, and glad to see it found a home in the calendar.

  • Story a Day Report for May 6th

    Title: None

    Word Count: Not sure, as I wrote by hand today, but probably around 400 words

    Genre: Flash fiction

    Total Time: 30 minutes

    Comments: Another uninspired day, but at least I got words down. Looking forward to having unlimited time on the weekend to write.

  • Story a Day Report for May 5th

    Title: Untitled

    Genre: Flash fiction

    Word Count: 156 words

    Total Time: 10 minutes

    Comments: I wrote this piece for another one of Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenges, but I’m not sure it’s going to get posted. The muse has really not been around this week. I keep writing because I committed to writing, but so far I’m not happy with the work I’ve produced this month. If I sit down with it tomorrow and like whatever revisions I make, it might go up, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.

  • Story a Day Report for May 4th

    Title: My Best Friend

    Word Count: Not sure. I typed this by hand. I’m going to guess around 500.

    Total Time: 40 minutes

    Genre: Mainstream

    Comments: Still struggling to get words out this week. My friend’s death has me in a bit of a funk. Still, I’m pushing through and working. I love the idea in the story, I just need to hone it and make it stronger. There’s definitely some potential here. This is going to be a good piece. It just needs revision.

  • Story a Day Report for May 3rd

    Title: None

    Word Count: 1,001

    Total Time: 1.5 hours

    Genre: Horror

    Comments: I don’t hate this one. It’s a pretty complete piece. I need to flesh out a bit of narrative in the middle, but it doesn’t have the huge gaps that are in my stories from the first two days. It’s not great, but I’m also a beginning horror writer. This is only the second piece of horror I’ve actually attempted. It needs some work, but there’s definitely potential. Plus, I had fun writing it.

  • Story-A-Day Report: Day 2

    Title: None

    Word Count: 1,122

    Total Time: Didn’t keep track. It was a busy day with bad news (see below), so I just took it 100 words at a time in between phone calls, errands, and other things. I’m going to say 3 hours,  but it was 3 hours laced with distractions. Obviously. Because I can easily write 1,000 words in 1/3 of the time when my life is a bit calmer.

    Genre: Science fiction

    Comments: I thought this story was going to be great, but I’m not happy with it at all, and it feels uninspired. Then again, I was uninspired. It’s not technically finished. There’s a stopping point, but it doesn’t feel like an ending at all. A friend of mine died last night, and I haven’t been in much of a writing mood today. Still, I did what I could. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Actually, tomorrow, I’m going to be too busy to write. Which is to say, I will write, but I’m pretty sure I won’t like what I’ve written.

  • Story a Day Report for May 1st

    Story Title: None

    Word Count: 5,300

    Total Time: 6 hours, 15 minutes (though I imagine it might have been a little less, as that whole presidential announcement proved to be quite a distraction).

    Genre: Personal alternate history

    Comments: It has a beginning, middle, and end, but it’s not complete. There are brackets where sections need to be finished and filled in. Still, the structure and major plot points are all there. The biggest problem right now is that it’s very heavy on the exposition, but sparse on dialogue. This is one of my major writing issues, though, so I’m not surprised. I think this piece has potential, but it will definitely need a lot of work.

  • Find me at the Story-a-Day Website

    Participating in Story-a-Day? Feel free to check out my profile at the site and add me as a friend. Of course, I’ll be blogging about my progress here, but I’ll be doing brief updates and such as the site as well. Looking forward to seeing your stories this coming month!

  • Another flash fiction challenge

    Chuck Wendig is hosting another flash fiction challenge at his blog. This time, we’re limited to three sentences.

    Untitled

    “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The student chucked the textbook across the room and went to the registrar’s office to change her major.

  • One Week Until Story-A-Day!

    I’m looking forward to doing Story-A-Day again this year (and hopefully, not getting so far behind 3/4 of the way through that I almost give up). I already have more than enough prompts to get me through the month, too. I currently have 43 ideas, titles, or other inspirational notes to keep me going. So if something never strikes my fancy, I have plenty of backup.

    I won’t be posting my stories here (because editors/publishers often won’t look at pieces published on personal blogs), but I will be chronicling my progress.

    It looks like I’m going to have a busy week coming up (a 3-hour dental appointment, starting a new job, etc.), but I think I can get one story completely done before the month of mass first drafts begins. I can’t wait to see all the new stories that next month will bring.