2♦sdays @ our treehouse – 1/18 Challenge!

A few years back, B&N’s Teen blog put up a post about which anthologies, in their opinion, had gotten the art of the young adult short story right. Their list included some headlining authors as well as smaller lights in the field. YA collections have always been useful for introducing lesser-known writers, which is why a couple of smart people in the industry, Nova Ren Suma and Emily X. R. Pan, have kicked off FORESHADOW. “FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology is to offer a unique new online venue for young adult short stories, with a commitment to showcasing underrepresented voices, boosting emerging writers, and highlighting the beauty and power of YA fiction.” This monthly anthology is the opportunity that many writers have been waiting for.

To that end, our writing group thought it would be fun to do a little exercise of our own. Through the first (technical) half of 2018, January – June, every second Tuesday of the month, we’re going to post an image here on Wonderland of a Creative Commons licensed Flickr picture to which you can respond – via short story (potentially something to be polished for subbing to Foreshadow or elsewhere), poem, or just a scene polishing up dialogue, setting, characterization, or anything else you’d like to work on. Maybe you’re doing Morning Pages, and writing three pages first thing. You can certainly come up with some thoughts on this image, and even some thoughts which might spur some deeper creativity. For two weeks, you can join the fun by posting a link to share. We’ll keep the momentum going the following month by posting another image the second Tuesday of February, the 13th, and so on, until we take a breather for summer. We hope this will be the little kick in the pants you need to get writing, keep writing, or polish up your skills.

And without further ado, this month’s image: