30th January 2017
Still reeling from the shock news (by personal email and announcement on the site itself) that Amazon is closing it's writers' platform - Write On by Kindle - on 22nd March 2017. After the baldest of statements, the recommendation is to download and copy our works before the site closes and is gone forever. Have to love their timing - announcement on this Aussie's beloved Australia Day, and closing their doors on my birthday. It can surely only go onwards and upwards from here?
This follows a lengthy time of no response whatsoever from WO technical support staff, despite countless pleas, requests, even strong demands for a response of any kind. The automated action of producing the weekly format of Feedback Friday requests and Weekend Write-in prompts has continued like all automatons do - mechanically, with no human emotion. Offers from experienced authors to help in any way with the forum have been ignored totally.
A private message to me today from a published author friend suggest this was done here to Tablo, when Amazon pulled the rug on published Tablo authors on their book sales site with no reason given and despite apparently heroic efforts by the Tablo team, no reaction to them either. I'm awaiting confirmation of this from Tablo and also to find out if future directions include the kind of vibrant, caring community of writers interacting on the kind of forum we have enjoyed on Write On by Kindle. Hundreds of frustrated and miserable writers are seeking a new home to 'cluster' in. None of us want to lose the friendships and support we have developed. We've benefited greatly from each other's experiences and learning, plus having been fortunate enough to have two highly experienced editors giving of their time to consider the first 600 words of any of our works and offering substantial editing comment. It's called the G600, representing that the first 600 words of a story either grab an editor, or it's directly to the 'slush' heap for your works.
But what does this mean for me? Not entirely sure yet. I'm revving up my Wattpad account again (along with many WO writers) with the thought to have our works in several places - but that's not where most of us wish to be - for various reasons. I'm thinking that when I have protested everywhere I can think of, and time to just 'breathe', I would like to continue this 'prompt' collection, and the discipline of keeping each piece to around the 500 word mark. I have several 'prompt' possibility lists - maybe try a 'pin the tail on the donkey' choice (like, put a list up on my computer, close eyes and point and then use that word/s). Sounds good.
How amazing that the last flash-fiction I wrote for the weekend write-in - 'Hornblower... is that You?' should describe what has happened, well before it did? I'm thinking of the words of my 'Little Boy Blue' parody -
Come my son WO, come blow your horn.
I'm losing my faith in you, since you were born.
Where is the prompt, I ask you my boy?
"It challenges the writers, it's not just a toy"
"Will you find it?"
"No, not I;
"I like them to suffer, to whimper, to cry."
The writerly folk of Write On are surely doing that.
BUT... we are writers, and if we can overcome writer's block and turn the tiniest glimmers of imagination into the roughest of first drafts - and eventually into most enjoyable stories... then we can overcome ANYTHING!
Don't leave this corner of the woods. We all believe the best is yet to come.
The chapters following are the last 'prompt' 500 word+ flash fictions I wrote for WriteOn by Kindle.
After that, I'm thinking I'll begin a new collection with the prompts from here separated from my collection of 'Prompt Perspectives' (prompts from Tablo Publishing and elsewhere), as these have no word number constraints.
YOU ARE READING
Prompt and Circumstance
Short StoryA collection of tales I wrote to meet the challenges of the Weekend write-in Prompts on Amazon's writing platform, (the soon to close) WriteOn for Kindle. At around 500 words each, they are quick little reads to fill in a dull moment.
