Blogging Challenges

As I’m attempting to complete NaBloPoMo this month, I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to plan out my posts to keep myself on track. And what should I stumble upon while trawling the internet for inspiration but TWO creative writing challenges! The first is from Lady Antimony, whose Ghouls Galore challenge I took part in last October. The challenge is this:

Resolution Confusion!

You have 6 choices of ‘resolutions’ – it’s your job to twist them as you see fit, make it go wrong in the worst possible way! 

You have up to 750 words to do so.

You will post your entry on Tuesday the 10th of January.

The ‘Resolutions’

1: I will go on a diet and lose weight.

2: I will donate more money to charity.

3: I will work harder to get that promotion.

4: I will write that book and get published.

5: I will go to anger management classes.

6: I will drink less – alcohol, caffeine etc.

But as that’s only a one day challenge, I of course felt that I needed something else to keep the creative juices flowing. Again, Antimony helped me out here, her blog linking me to the #Nightgale challenge:

 4 stories, 200 words each, Thursdays in January

Immortality vs Mortality has been an intense topic through out the ages and especially with Romantic Poets. And I don’t mean romantic as in kisses, hearts, and flowers. I mean Romantic as in the time of Romanticism with William Blake, John Keats, and Percy Shelley. The time of Frankenstein and striving for the ellusive life everlasting through any means necessary.

As it will be a new year I decided that what better way to start it off than to embrace our fears and joys over our own mortality, isn’t that what everyone thinks about every new year? lol.

So for this Blog Challenge I issue you to create four stories 200 word minimum that includes a sort of journey or realization about immortality or the lack there of in striving for it.

In Keat’s poem Ode to a Nightingale  and Shelley’s Hymn To Intellectual Beauty they try to acquire or become one with  immortality in the following ways:

January 5th – PROMPT  Through Hemlock

Keats: “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:”(Ode To A Nightingale)

January 12th – PROMPT Immortality comes to you, you do not go to Immortality

Shelley- “Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?… No voice from sublimer world hath ever, To sage or poet these responses given – Therefore the name of God and ghosts and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour,”(Hymn To Intellectual Beauty)

January 19th – PROMPT To Die and become one with Nature

Keats – “Darkling I listen, for many a time, I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die;”(Ode To A Nightingale)

January 26th – PROMPT : Writing is Immortality

Keats – “But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retarts: Already with thee! Tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,”(Ode To a Nightingale)

So there you have it! Check back here on Thursday to read my first #Nightgale entry, and if you want to sign up for either of the challenges then do so by clicking on the links which I’ve provided!