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 18/11/07, we posted this image:
Hold, originally uploaded 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.
“Like Love, You Take It When You Leave.” by Andrew Cheverton
She could feel him growing thin.
Here in the orange air. Upon the rain-slicked stones. A Friday night. He felt ever so thin. His limbs, stone sticks. His chest, ribbed tight.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Babyhead Corona” by Josh Hechinger
There was a man up the street. Heavy coat, cap on backwards. Baby over his shoulder; he was giving it a gentle rock-a-by in the middle of the street.
Strange, Aloysius thought. That a man should be comforting a baby there. And that baby looked strange too, oddly stiff. Unnervingly so. The bus creaked forward again and he was prepared to forget about man and child.
“We Adore What You Abandon” by Douglas Noble
The chips are gone. He took his time over that last one, making sure he got the best of it. Carefully, he sucks each of his fingers, getting the last of the salt and the other flavours. That’d be it for a while. It’s not four squares any more. He’d be hunting for pennies and half sandwiches. It never seemed to be enough.
“The One Who Gets Away” by Xander Bennett
I can’t believe you’re leaving me.
No, that’s not quite true. I can believe it; I can imagine you getting on that train and racing away from me, back to the factory that birthed you. It’s the law, and baby, that’ll never change. And it’s clearer than ever, here at the end, that you were never mine to begin with.
“Nothing For The Kids” by Rol Hirst
“Where? What were they doing?”
“Just mucking about, running round on the precinct, knocking into people, shouting out the c-word like they just invented the fucking thing, calling people names…”
“Calling people names?” Jodie pouts.
“I know, I know – I shouldn’t have… I should have just walked on past, ignored ‘em…”
“Five Easy Steps To Help You Let Her Go” by Nicolas Papaconstantinou
One day, your best loved friend, the girl that your mates always rib you about, your perfect platonic chum, is going to want to leave.
It isn’t going to be easy on either of you – that is the tragedy of having such a solid relationship. The kind that has seen you both through playground bullies, difficult first loves (yours, not hers… she didn’t really start dating boys until university, an abstract experience for you, lived vicariously through long and frequent letters), a failed marriage each (no kids, thank god). In fact, it has potential to be devastating, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are five easy steps to help you let her go.
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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