It is very interesting to me to see how people have interpreted this poem. I always knew that there was a certain amount of ambiguity there (and maybe in a lot of poems). I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to make the reader work at the interpretation even if it sometimes goes off on a somewhat different line from the one intended by the author. In this case, perhaps because the feeling I was trying to express was so clear in my own mind, it didn't even occur to me that some of these other ideas were possible! The woman isn't supposed to have died in childbirth (the 2nd stanza and the present tense are the clue) but I can now see how the last stanza might make you think that...

What an excellent way to acquire cheap real estate (if you have the talent!). I prefer this one to your first story (although I enjoyed than one too) because it is more surprising.

Ah, now I can see how that preamble didn't help! Pretty dumb preamble (but at least the "desert island girl" bit made sense).

Ah, yes. The infamous cover art, which I must confess I have noticed. Hard for most 20 year old men not to notice that! (or should that be hard for 20 year old men to notice that? at the risk of a joke offending the TOS) Of course there is quite a bit of that kind of art on Renderosity.

Thanks for your comments Chuck.

I know it isn't obvious in the 2nd line what's going on but I didn't want to make the whole situation too explicit. I thought it was OK to leave a bit of mystery and imagination there and allow the reader to try to fill in the gaps for him or herself. So long as you get the general impression that the narrator is wondering why the "desert island girl" shows him the scan and coming up with a theory, a bit of ambiguity doesn't matter. Again, I know it isn't obvious why she is a "desert island girl" but if you understand it as a general term of endearment you've got the point.

I hope there were enough clues to tell you that the scan is a pregnancy scan and the hence the "doubly" radiant body is radiant from the woman and her unborn child.

This piece is supposed to be about an unrequited love ("useless" as described in the poem) and the narrator's attempt to come to terms with this ("cauterising the heart") by taking some kind of spiritual comfort from the simple wonder of the woman's pregnancy.

If it needs this much explanation then it hasn't really worked :-(

I'm glad you liked the last stanza. It is deliberately structured so that, that is the only rhyme 'cos I thought it was more powerful to finish on a rhyming couplet.

I suspect the partial explanation for your last comment is that sadness is a better motivator for writing than happiness. A full explanation would say why, but I can't answer than one.

It is interesting to compare Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert in their treatments of religion because, as you say, they both use it as a major theme and whilst I don't like the Heinlein, I love Frank Herbert's work (even in the 2nd and subsequent books of the Dune trilogy).

For me, the key difference is that Herbert is interested in exploring the effect of his invented religion on the worshipers and the "messiah". He has some subtle things to say about how human beings seem to need religion and will ignore reality to get what they want, to the extent of making their leaders into martyrs. But even when he's describing the excesses of religion and the inner thoughts of the "messiah" I never feel he's preaching at me (the reader), just showing me how and why religion is making his universe descend into a violent jihad.

With Heinlein, his Messiahs don't have any problems (or at least not any problems of conscience, just problems of plot) and you get the impression that the author more than half believes in the message and wants to convince you how clever it is. That's why I feel he's preaching at me. Go much further in that direction and you end up with something like L. Ron Hubbard and scientology. Now that is scary!

I haven't read the Gor series (and it isn't that I'm just not admitting it!) although of course I've heard of them. Don't know why that series escaped me as at some stage I've read most of the "famous" fantasy series (including a few that I'd admit to reading but not liking, though I still finished them anyway so they can't have been that bad!) I guess Gor just slipped through the net, but it sounds from what you're saying as though I might not have liked it!

This is the writers forum after all Chuck! I guess we don't do just looking :-)

Interesting discussion and I thought I'd contribute my two pence worth. I don't read much in the way of detective fiction. Science fiction is generally more to my taste (and some fantasy but I'm quite critical of a lot of books I know many people like in this genre.) Favourite authors? This could be a long list... Philip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, Tolkein (I even like the Silmarillion which I know many readers find disappointing after LOTR. I admit it can be hard going!) Bradbury (particularly the Martian Chronicles), Bruce Sterling, M John Harrison etc.... I could go on but perhaps it's best to refer you to my own web site of personal reviews if you're really interested in why I like these authors and in some of my favourite all time books... Some Book Reviews Trying to stay on topic I was interested in dialyns observation about changing taste. There are some authors I really liked, which I now look back on with fondness but wouldn't go out of my way to reread (e.g. Asimov) or the E.E. 'Doc' Smith epic Lensman series (which I suppose even at the time I always knew was only a piece of rip roaring escapism, and none the worse for that). My most extreme example in this category is Robert Heinlein. When I was first beginning to read science fiction at school I loved the "juveniles" - stories such as "Tunnel in the Sky", "Farmer in the Sky" and the more sophisticated "Door into Summer". I even liked the questionable "Starship Troopers" and quite enjoyed "Stranger in a Strange Land". Now I know this may upset the die hard fans, but as I got older and my political views matured, I found his later books increasingly hard to stomach. The plots of books such as "Job" and "The Number Of The Beast" got very narcissistic and navel gazing and the oddball extreme libertarian anti-government stuff just strikes me as crackpot. I also suspected that I was being preached at rather than entertained. In fact I started to feel that if Jubal Harshaw (one of Heinlein's many "wise acre" characters) patronised me with just one more little homily I'd like to punch his lights out (and I am not a violent person at all!) So I ended up actively disliking (if not hating) his work. Not sure if this was the author changing, or me changing, or a bit of both (but I had to get that rant off my chest!)

I think you've done a good job with an interesting theme (more comments attached to the image).

It is a poem and a very good one at that (even if you don't think it is!). I had no problems with the flow and the cadence. All very smooth and I understood the emotion perfectly. Thank you for posting it.

BellaMorte: Ah, I understand your story a little better now! I hadn't picked up on that nuance of using humour to deflect fear but it does ring true (maybe 500 words is just too short to bring that out or perhaps I was just too dense to see it). Actually, the more I think about it, the more it seems like a profound idea which could work very well if it was developed more fully in a longer piece. I can see it as an effective way of building character into the "victim" and deepening the final horror. There is a fine line between innocent laughter and hysterical laugher, after all and taking the reader from one to the other could make for a very disturbing tale. It sounds like you scared yourself a bit in writing this! I like your writing style and I can't think of any particular "tips". I'm too embarassed to offer tips when all my own weaknesses are on show in this thread :-) Perhaps one observation though. Your comment about finding this hard to write, probably means that it's been a worthwhile thing to attempt. I reckon the hard things are the ones that make you think more critically about your own writing and that's a good way to improve...

dialyn : I can't believe how many people have taken up the challenge and how good the results are! There are some interesting writers in this forum. I keep meaning to try and contribute to some of the other threads but just keeping up with this one is hard work!

bikermouse : Thanks for reading and commenting. I agree with your suggestion. On balance I prefer your rephrasing of the opening two sentences of "The Wind Over The Border". It reads better combined into a single sentence. Personally, the general flow of the text is an aspect of that piece that I'm dissatisfied with. It's not so bad at the beginning but later where I had to squeeze the word count hard the sentences get choppy and the rhythm is disrupted. I'm sure that one of the secrets of writing well is to strike a good balance between long and short sentences. In this excercise, cutting an original back to 500 words sometimes results in an ugly structure for the resultant text but I don't think it needs to stay ugly. I think it just means that you have to try harder to restore the flow again. Another editing pass is what's called for. If you've got the patience ! There are certainly some good examples in this thread where it's been managed very well. I like cambert's 2nd story a lot. The idea of a perfect aerial photograph ties in quite neatly with a literal interpretation of heaven as a place "up there", and that fantasy of the afterlife as the ability to be all seeing and all knowing. It's an original idea (but I also agree with dialyn that I got a bit hung up on trying to work out the relationship of the protaganists) Geminirand : I can see how this one would make a good set up for some later writing where the headless corpses make a reappearance. Is that what you have planned in your novel? I was a bit confused by her "religious" husband also becoming a headless corpse when he wasn't involved in the original ceremony and so I presume he isn't supposed to have any supernatural powers. But perhaps I'm meant to be confused. Obviously there is a mystery behind the (normal!?) supernatural events here as you're hinting in the final paragraph... Still, just goes to show that beheading isn't the way to stop a witch from rising again. I'll bear that in mind next time I see one... BellaMorte : Like in cambert's story the most frightening ideas can be the ones that reveal supressed information about ourselves. This is a major spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen it but the recent file "The Others" with Nicole Kidman explored this sort of territory and very chilling it was too. I'd thoroughly recommend it. I like the way you handle the dialog in this story. It builds up the tension very nicely. My only criticism would be that the start of the piece is in quite a jokey style, with the various asides e.g. "I'm not the screaming type" and then it all gets more "serious". I actually enjoyed the jokey style and the more "straight" horror but I'm not sure they blend well together. Pretty hard to do in 500 words!

jagill : Now that is a nasty idea! Haunted by your own reflection - not something you can ever get away from and maybe some allegory in there (after all I'm sure everyone has looked at their reflection at least once after a hangover and thought "yuk", even if it didn't work out quite as badly as it did for Reilly!). Good story.

I promised I'd have a 2nd go at this challenge myself. My opening piece at the start of the thread was reusing some old work and that was staring to feel like cheating :-) So here is something written just for this forum, finished about five minutes ago and coming in at exactly 500 words. ------------------------------------------------------------ Coalford Junction I wasnt the last person to see Kelsey Miller alive. But when I heard the sound of the 7:27 derail with a scream of tortured metal I thought I had been. I turned the pickup truck round in a cloud of dust. Five minutes earlier Id been crossing the junction just below the wooden signal box. Id waved at Kelsey, standing in front of the levers. The old signalman had a fat cigar behind one ear and thick black rim spectacles. He was so much a part of my landscape that I never gave him a second thought. But I ought to have done because hed retired last week. It coincided with the introduction of an electronic system to govern the whole railway from the sea to the state boundary. By rights Kelsey had no part in that. Wed had some beers, me and the lads and Kelsey. He was always trying to strike a deal with you over something. That was just how he was. That and his beloved railway. He didnt really fit in with us. Different generation, I guess but he tried his best and we tried to give him a good send off. What will you do now? I asked. He shrugged. Ive got some deals. Ill get by I didnt think he would. Now I had other things to think about. A freight train had taken out the last three express passenger carriages. The signal box was crushed. There were bodies all over the banking. Some were moving but most werent. I did the best I could but I was second on the scene. The first survivors claimed an old man helped them. An old man with thick black spectacles and a fat cigar behind his ear. When Doc Martin arrived Kelsey was nowhere to be seen. For an hour we saved our words to comfort the injured. Mercifully only three travellers died in that crash but it was bad enough. And all on the morning Kelsey Miller had himself a fatal heart attack, Doc Martin sighed as heavy lifting gear arrived. But Kelsey Died at 6:45 this morning. Not that it made much difference. Hed have been killed in that signal box for sure. I said nothing. A software failure caused the accident. The system routed a freight train onto the main line just after the 7:27. An error in timetable records, they said at the inquiry. The engineers reckoned it might have been worse. Levers had been pulled in the signal box, averting a head on collision. Just as well the maintenance people hadnt got round to disconnecting them. I thought about it later: the way Kelseys last trade might have worked. A trade of deaths. The useless heart attack for the useful accident. And there was one last days work to be done after he retired After he died. I realised that I wasnt the last person to see Kelsey Miller alive. I was the first to see his ghost.