Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgh. My story stopped making sense about 45 minutes ago. I think I’d have better luck just tossing paragraphs in the air and letting them fall where they will. (Hm. New writing technique.) I sent it anyway. 
Thanks for the challenge–these are great fun, even when it’s agony. My hat’s the black one I bought way back when I wanted to be Princess Diana. It’s an old hat, but I like it.
Awwww I don’t know if I would go with really cool, but thanks 
I will say, the photo was a tough one - I think an hour and a half of that was spent trying to figure out what kind of story would fit with the image!
Making sense is over-rated.
It was well over 24 hours before I started writing, partly because of other stuff going on starting Friday afternoon, but the picture wasn’t part of the problem. In fact, as soon as I saw it, I had a notion where my story had to be, but some of the ideas from the prompt words didn’t fit with it right away.
And after some hamster wrestling, there’s one from Savannah - good work!
Hope I can participate–looking at my schedule over the next week, it may be difficult. But we’ll see what we can do.
Glad to see that the stories are coming in, though; I’m looking forward to reading them!
And this morning there’s an arrival from Baker - great!
Done writing. Do I send the finished product to the same email addy?
Yep, ArrMatey! - what I did was respond to the automailer and included my story there.
Woot for another finished tale!
And I just got ArrMatey!'s story - Capital!
Here’s a muscle that ain’t been flexed in a while!
Oh hey wait, question: format restrictions? are these prose short stories, or are other forms (poetry, drama, etc) also acceptable?
I suppose you could pretty much do whatever you want, but the stories are typically prose. There is a seperate contest for poetry that happens every few months or so.
These are prose short stories, which is not to say you can’t make it a poem or a script if you want. You would, in all probability, end up being the only poem or script submitted.
As Barkis is Willin’ mentioned, the Poetry Sweatshops happen every other month with spectacular irregularity; if you’re interested, I’ll put your name down on the Private Message mailing lists for both poetry and short fiction so that you get notified about the next round.
Now that you mention it, we’ve never had one for scriptwriting. Hmm, that gives me an idea…
jackdavinci - I just received the preferred edition of your story. Well done!
I just got my email…
and realised I’ve got mother’s day, a birthday (including a themed cake), a writers group assignment and a cold to deal with over the next 60 hours.
Yay!
Love the prompts. Fizzing with potential.
I think I’ll send for the prompt before work tomorrow morning. It’ll give me something to distract me from worrying how this month’s webseminar for 200 will go wrong. It’s a different problem every month, so they kept it interesting.
Gah - I’m having difficulties with Photobucket. Some writers have been clicking on the link to the photo, only to be told “Bandwidth Exceeded”.
I have downloaded a copy of the file to my desktop, and I can attach it (manually) to another outgoing e-mail if required. The trouble is, I won’t be very close to my desk this weekend…
Le Min - I can upload the picture to my blog server, and give you a URL to put in the auto-reply. Since I’ve already submitted, I’ve seen the picture, and I promise I won’t leak the URL to anybody who hasn’t started the contest yet.
xenophon41 - in my panic of trying to find a cached copy of the photo, I neglected to mention that I had received your story overnight - great job!
Both chrisk and xenophon41 have kindly offered to let me link to the photo through their blog sites/web sites. I may be in touch if that proves necessary - so far, I think I’m okay and have got things sorted out with the photo at its original location.
For the record, I have stories from the following people -
JoseB
Puddleglum
Le Ministre de l’au-delà
chrisk
GIGObuster
Woeg
Savannah
Baker
ArrMatey!
jackdavinci and
xenophon41.
Le Ministre, I didn’t intend to enter yet, but my Yahoo email account was hacked, and I’ve received the reply. You’ll receieve some email from me asking to ignore any messages from that account, but since I have the response, I may give it a shot anyway.