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 10/02/08, we posted this image:

No Cycling by Nicolas 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.

“Made To Be Broken” by Andrew Cheverton

The glass is cold / and will not warm / it simply takes his heat / and loses it / magics it away / leaving him frozen here / a statue of himself

“Confessions Of A Boring Teenager” by Josh Hechinger

But the thought had occurred to me. Nineteen is the limit for being a stupid teenager and getting into tomfoolery and hijinks. It means you can’t, with any real authority, talk about The Man keeping you down. If you do so as a teenager, it’s ridiculous but forgivable, because…well, frankly, you’re a teenager, and they largely have shit for brains. If you’re a twenty-nothing and start talking about The Man…well, you’re just sad, aren’t you? Sad and an idiot.

“Window Notice” by Douglas Noble

lost doggie went missin on his walk his name is busta and he will answer he went missing on the 10th of February and havent been seen since please if you seen him call my phone on 07X7222222221…

“No” by Xander Bennett

It dun’t say nothin’ about ‘No Vagrants’. Don’t care what you say, I got a right to stand here. Yep, you go back inside! Go back in. Call em, then! Call whoever you want. Thass right. Dun’t say anything about vagrants. I ain’t even busking, just bidin’ my time. Just watching the folks go past.

“The Sentry And The Centaur” by David Baillie

Vincent approached the Sentry. Bob, who was the guard on duty that day, stared straight ahead. He was very good at this. In fact he’d excelled in that particular unit of basic training. Vincent smiled a smile that he’d be incapable of in a few years’ time. The sort of smile that suggests innocence in a boy, but arrogance in a man.

“This One Time” by Nicolas Papaconstantinou

Anyway, so, back then, Alys used to work down in one of those offices, down near the docks. You know there are those chocolates, these little balls, and they’re all honeycomb on the inside. Perfect spheres, all gorgeous and loud to bite into, but then there’s just air and nothing inside? Nice and tasty, but basically full of air and nothing inside? And you know that there are those girls who are like that, all sharp sweet smells and slap, but not a lot going on anywhere else? Alys is, like, the exact photo-negative opposite of those girls.

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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