Challenge
One Work: Ulysses and the Sirens
I wasn’t familiar with this painting until I found it in my illustrated Odyssey, and I was blown away by it. I was previously unfamiliar with the artist, Herbert James Draper, which possibly makes me an uncouth philistine, or at least absent that day in art history. Regardless, the situation has been remedied, and I’m exploring more of his work.
By Harper Lewis 3 months ago in Writers
There Oughta Be a Law: Bastille Day Update
Bastille Day is upon us. It’s also my friend Paige’s birthday, so I want to celebrate! In hopes of busting the populace out of the prison of their minds, I’m extending the challenge until National Ice Cream Day (July 19). Here’s the challenge:
By Harper Lewis 3 months ago in Writers
The Winter of a Writer's Discontent.
Novel's spirit is now free, as it dances with the wildness of the wind. Here she once stood - poised between youth and age, her beauty tempered by time, yet radiant with wisdom. Her autumn shadow which once carried fiery leaves, bare limbs of balance and transformation - has now become wintered. Her greying hair loosens slightly, reaching out, like branches in the wind...and the mountains behind her silently ululate in between a golden and snowy equilibrium - here, there is neither dawn nor dusk, just the eternal middle.
By Novel Allen3 months ago in Writers
Nolan Reed: And The Voice Beyond His Lifetime
Years after Nolan Reed’s death, critics began constructing a larger narrative around a figure who spent his career speaking to people rather than chasing traditional literary fame, creating a legacy built from personal transformation, psychological insight, and fictional storytelling that many later scholars viewed as an unusual bridge between public encouragement and imaginative literature. Reed entered public attention as a motivational speaker whose discussions centered on resilience, emotional growth, self-awareness, and the complicated patterns that shape human choices, and later generations examined those speeches alongside his fiction as evidence of a lifelong effort to understand the inner struggles of ordinary people.
By Nolan Reed3 months ago in Writers
What Still Lives With You?
Introduction This is something that I was not sure how to approach. I am more than Facebook Friends with Justine, having used her work in many of my poems, and we are going to produce a collaborative art and poetry book sometime in the future.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 3 months ago in Writers
Seek me in the Matrix... Where My Consciousness now exists. Honorable Mention in The Posthumous Author Challenge.
🜁🜁🜁 Can it be true. Is Novel really gone. That is the question that everyone is asking. Why did she have a closed casket. Why was there a no-viewing allowed memorial and obsequies.
By Novel Allen3 months ago in Writers
Adulting Children's Stories Challenge
Happy Saturday, folks! I know it’s been a while since I’ve done an unofficial challenge—work, work, deaths in the family, work—but I figured that it’s about time that I get back on that horse, and this morning, someone gave me the perfect idea for my next challenge (thank you, Jesse Lee).
By Stephanie Hoogstad3 months ago in Writers
The Attraction
So, how do we get more new users to engage with the Vocal page? This was the one conundrum I have thought about the most, long before it was posted as a particular question on the page. We have a unique environment here that allows us to discuss multiple subjects without many obstacles (just get the word limit right). I am working on one of her other Challenges as I type this, and I have a Vocal Challenge in mind that will all come together, at least by the deadline later next week. As I thought about this over the years, I came up with certain ideas - good and bad - that could help. But the question is very specific: new users to our page.
By Kendall Defoe 3 months ago in Writers
Eclectic Author Dead in Skydiving Accident
Six names, seven decades, no husbands, one adopted child, and nine dogs deep into life, author S. A. Crawford (the least known but most truthful name she went by in print) is dead at seventy-eight years old after a freak skydiving accident that also claimed the life of one battered and front-coverless copy of Walden: or Life in the Woods by David Henry Thoreau. Sources say she was still trying to finish the slim but arduous volume, which she bought in her twenties, on the day of her death because, and I quote,
By S. A. Crawford4 months ago in Writers
