Welcome to Elephant Words!

Every Sunday we post an image, and for the next six days we take turns to write something inspired by that image. There’s an open invite for you to take the challenge yourself – let the image inspire you to write something, and post it either to your own website, or the forum here.

This page has been set up to showcase a typical week at Elephant Words. We hope you enjoy what you see, and decide to look around some more.

On 01/03/09, we posted this image:

At The Pub by Nick Papaconstantinou.

This image inspired six very different pieces of writing. Excerpts of each follow, and you can read each post in full by clicking on its excerpt. Once you have, you can leave a comment on the post or in the forum, or navigate to the next or last piece using the calendar or the links at the top and bottom of each post.

“Dance With Me” by Cynthia Lugo

“Oh look! Boys! Well, no, not my sort of boys either, but now I can have some wee small smidge of hope that more will arrive soon. Where goes one dangling penis, another cannot help but follow. Wait. That doesn’t sound right at all. Anyway, what’s the use in going out and getting smashed if I don’t wind up with a few new regrets? Oh, yes please. By which I mean: Oh. And Yes. And Please.”

“Every Cloud” by Ian Sharman

Yes…yes, officer, I have been drinking…

“Company” by Matthew Hartwell

“My current desktop is a picture of a bowl of blueberries in a girl’s lap, as she lounges in a bikini. It’s very artistic. Very sexual. Very pop, too. Bright stripes bikini, blue bowl, blue berries. It screams ‘Let me be an album cover.’”

“It screams cheesecake.”

“Fears And Cautions” by Rivka Jacobs

One of the LPNs nodded, “That’s a good choice.” The Lion’s Den was a British-style pub in Charleston, West Virginia. A female-friendly place with booths, smooth jazz playing in the background, and a congenial atmosphere. It compared favorably with the usual bars found in the area, replete with loud music, dark and dirty crannies, dancing girls, mechanical bulls, and obnoxious drunken men.

Lois’ face wrinkled into a frown. “It’s not a good choice. It’s not a good choice at all,” she said forcefully. “You don’t go out with men you meet over the internet. Not after what happened to Lucy.”

“The Man In The Attic” by Suzi Rose

It was a Saturday afternoon in October and I was having lunch in a little corner street café in Paris with a man named Pierre, a detective…

Ok, that isn’t strictly true…

“How To Look At Girls” by Nicolas Papaconstantinou

“Grr. I can’t believe you got that seat.”
“It was just the first space I saw. But you have to keep an eye out for these things.” He grins. “I can’t believe that you are still such a lousy lesbian. It’s been six months.”
“It’s been six months since I told everyone.” She says, looking shyly into the pint glass that she’s taking a sip from. “I’ve been gay a lot longer than that, Stef.”
“Well, then, that’s even worse. You are so bad at noticing girls.” He takes a swig from his own drink, then puts it down suddenly.

As you can see, a week at Elephant Words can feature any sort of writing, telling any sort of story, or even not telling a story at all!

Why not give it a try yourself? We’d love to see what you come up with!

Either tell us what you’ve been up to in the comments of the relevant image post, or post it up in the forum! Remember, it can be any sort of writing, in any style and genre… The only rule is that you have fun writing it!

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