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The Sudden Makeover
By: Mehreen Ahmed

Once, there lived three friends, Una, Ulle and Ursula. While they were all outgoing, Una was a bit shy, Usha was not and Ursula, the happy medium, perfectly poised between the two. Ulle’s vivacity sometimes angered Una to the hilt. One day, they went out to have coffee and as they were looking for a place to sit down, Una said haltingly as always that she wanted to sit at the far end of the room. This enraged Ulle.

“You’re really awkward, you know!” She said. “And why can’t we sit in the middle?”

“Because, I’m embarrassed.”

“Who do you think would look at you?”

“May be no-one!”

“Still you’re, the way you are! You will not change.”

“I can’t change; you should know that by now.”

“Now, now let’s not waste time arguing over seats,” Ursula chimed in. “Why can’t we all sit in that corner next to the wall, best of both worlds?”

Macchiato

By: Mehreen Ahmed

Meaka woke up with a cold sweat. By the clock sitting next to her on the bedside table, it was three in the morning. She lay there in the dark, cold and sleepless thinking of getting out of bed. But somehow she could not. Her limbs would not give an inch and yet her brain kept saying otherwise. It felt as though it was racing — and racing it was like crazy. In the semi-darkness she looked across the room — an empty chair. Her gaze fixed on it almost asking it for a solution but this overwhelming inertia was hard to knock off.

Restlessness seized her when she finally got out of bed. It was four`0’ clock. Just a few hours from now, she was meeting a friend for coffee. Quietly slipping into her sandals she grabbed her dressing gown, opened the door softly and went into the living room closing the door behind her.

She turned one of the blinds poles to look through the narrow blade slits. The dark sky over the horizon had only just started to glow. Meaka waited for the sun. It steadily came up spreading some of that hue across the sky. She was going to have breakfast with Riana soon. A strange sort of pleasure possessed her at the thought. Last week’s coffee meeting was such an eye-opener; none of Riana’s stories moved her so much, as did this one.

Riana was 35. An accident left her disabled, when she was 5 years old. She had a rough childhood ever since. No one played with her at school. Friendless, she grew up feeling rejected, frustrated, and empty until she met Rick — her knight in shining armour who took all her worries away and filled her with new sensation. Now, married with two lovely boys, she lives with Rick in the next suburb —Campsie. Meaka and Riana had been friends for over two years. For Riana,Meaka is her best friend, her shoulder to cry on. And for Meaka, well! the relationship is just getting warmed up.

Waiting for Riana at the Coffee Club, Meaka flicked through the menu thinking what was holding her up. She was generally not this late. Her mobile rang out as she tried to call her. Meaka waited for ten more minutes — and then there she was, getting out of her car. She wore a tweed short skirt and a red topwith a deep neckline. Her cascading black hair shone in the golden sun as she crossed the road. At a slow pace she came on to the other side, holding her little boy’s hand securely, limping as usual.

The Black Coat Mehreen Ahmed One black wintry night, Piccolo -Xavier bumped into someone while crossing the road. Once he was across, the person on the receiving end was not visible anymore. It seemed that in the Parisian dark alley, it had just melted into darkness. When he peered further, he saw a black coat [...]

Are you writing about what you dream or do you dream of writing…decide and tell your story…
 
Featured Quote:
“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”
William Faulkner
 
Featured Poems:
There is No Frigate Like a Book
By: Emily Dickinson
 
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Poems from our forums and relationships found…
 
Featured Quotes:
“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.”
Leo Buscaglia
 
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust
  
Featured Poem: One Word Is Too Often Profaned
By: Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother;
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
 
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

Choices for you and choices for your characters…End where you began but make it a good one…   Feature Quote: “The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.” Frank Lloyd Wright   Featured Poem:Traveling Through the Dark By: William Stafford   Traveling through the dark [...]

More podcasts and thoughts to get your writing moving and your creativity flowing…John shares a one last handful of his favorite audio inspirations…
 
Featured Quotes:
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
By: Robert Frost
 
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
By: Robert Frost
  
John shares some more of his favorite podcasts that help inspire and influence him.  
 
Check out these great shows and sites:

Podcasts and thoughts to get your writing moving and your creativity flowing…John shares a handful of his favorite audio inspirations…
 
Featured Quote:
Belief, by definition is an assent to a proposition. It is any cognitive content that is held true. It is some expression or a vague idea in which some confidence is placed. Thus, it defines some sort of an agreement with the world view. It may be unproven assertion based on some of the fundamental assumptions. Belief is a form of judging something to be true, intermediate between mere opinion and certain knowledge. To believe something in this sense is to judge that it is true by virtue of “a ground that is objectively insufficient but subjectively sufficient”; in mere opinion neither is sufficient, in knowledge both conditions are met.Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
 
By: George Orwell
   
John shares some of his favorite podcasts that help inspire and influence him. 

Do you believe in your characters? OK, but do you have faith in your characters to live beyond the time you put them on paper? Is there a difference? Listen and engage in the writing prompts.
 
Featured Quote:
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Edith Hamilton
 
Inspiration for this week’s conversation:
Six Characters in Search of an Author is the most famous and celebrated play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello
  
Featured Poem: The Computation
By: John Donne
 
FOR my first twenty years, since yesterday,
I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away ;
For forty more I fed on favours past,
And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last ;
Tears drown`d one hundred, and sighs blew out two ;
A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you ;
Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life ; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal ; can ghosts die ?

John releases some inner voices…what do you release in your writing…
 
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
  
This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.
  
Featured Quotes:
“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”
Henry Miller
 
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.”
William Shakespeare
  
Featured Poem:
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
By: William Wordsworth
 
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

A look at a better story driven character and your connection as a writer…
  
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
  
This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.
  
Featured Quote:
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), (Sherlock Holmes) Valley of Fear, 1915
  
Featured Short Story:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure 4 – The Boscombe Valley Mystery
By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 
We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran in this way:
Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave Paddington by the 11:15.
“What do you say, dear?” said my wife, looking across at me. “Will you go?”
“I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.”

Grab that paper and write…a newspaper that is…

“If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play at it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s golf.”
~ Bob Hope

Headlines to help you with thoughts, ideas a provide realistic writing prompts:

“Run over on a Florida beach: can’t Americans walk anywhere at all?”

“No Flat for Cats”

“App Tells You Whether Your Date is a ‘Keeper’ or ‘Crazy’”

“Talking about a stinky subject”

Look up these headlines, of merely use them to help you come up with subjects for your storylines. What direction will you choose? Have you found other stories out there? Share them here or elsewhere, but write and enjoy.

Connecting Your Storyline with Your Storyline…    If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us: ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com 615-431-WRIT (9748)    This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.    Featured Quotes: “Play is often talked [...]

Reflect on your Knowledge and Imagine a new world…oh yeah, and write about it…    Featured Quote: “I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.”    “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.” ~Immanuel Kant     Featured Poem: Ode on a Grecian Urn ~ John Keats    [...]

Childhood connections or Nada…Your path defined by you, the poet, writer, creator… Featured Quote: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, [...]