You are hereby summoned before the DC Comedy Writers Group.

This week’s prompts involve:
- petty grievances
- over-explanations
- public hearings for household objects
- suspiciously defensive bathroom scales

Monday, May 11
8:30 PM ET
Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9969288414

#ComedyWriting #WritersGroup #DCComedyWriters

DC Comedy Writers: Accidental Utopia
Monday at 8:30 PM ET on Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9969288414

This week’s theme is Accidental Utopia.

Icebreaker:
React with surprise to a simple object working as it should.

Exercise:
Take something that almost always fails, or is usually badly designed, and imagine a utopian version of it.

#DCComedyWriters #ComedyWriting #StandUpWriting #JokeWriting #Satire #WritersGroup #ZoomComedy

The things I do for content..

Today, that was getting sunsick. Emerson and I went to a bookshop downtown after our original plans fell through, and I got…kind of irradiated making a video while I was waiting for him to finish up inside.

I have to be awake at 10 AM tomorrow for writer’s group and I did not nap today like a fool.

Pray for me, if you’re into that. If you’re not, send me good energy, I guess.

I need to shut my eyes now. I am so, so tired..

-Allēna

When You Kill A Spider In Your Daughter’s Room at Eleven PM

“Mom- there’s a bug!” startles you from your slumber.
So, you stumble out the bed, onto your feet, and make your way to the kitchen first, to get your weapon because toilet paper will not do-the guilt seeps through the thin plies of tissue.

Still squinting, you walk resolutely down the hall to her room.
She points to the corner wall as you fumble for more light and notice
the “bug ” is a spider and you see its size, color, shape, and that its legs are long but it’s not a Daddy-Longlegs, and it’s just sitting there

on the wall…in her room, and you, too sleepy to do the catch and release reserved for daytime spiders, apologize for your murderous action as you push the thicker-picker-upper paper towel against the wall where the intruder crouches

and you feel everything is wrong somehow- in the killing of an
innocently sitting spider, at eleven o clock at night, because
everyone knows, “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, and the words rise within,
like an arachnid ghost hovering, reminding you of words
that spiders don’t know and certainly don’t live by.

Besides, spiders are the good guys, you think to yourself,
then it occurs to you that good guys die, too…
and injustice finds its way into the hearts of everyone.

So, you squeeze that paper towel tight making sure all life is
crushed from within- and every innocent rises in your consciousness,
visions of concentration camps, mothers’ wombs,
and the memory from the news of one nine-year-old girl
shot dead while doing homework on her mamma’s bed after school.

And you think how nothing is fair and life is a game of chess
for some, but some are like the spider on the wall
in your daughter’s room at eleven PM.

###

Some of you who have followed my writing may recall this poem. This poem is one I continue to revise. It’s one of my favorite poems that I have penned though somewhat “clunky”. Maybe because it was so vivid as I wrote, and it was still a time when my daughter was alive. I originally wrote it in 2015. It was published in an earlier form in an anthology with a local writer’s group.

I think poetry is a powerful memory keeper. If you can capture the essence of a moment in verse you keep it forever.

Keep remembering. Keep writing.

Enthusiastically, Dawn

#nationalpoetrymonth

I'm back from my writers' group. I feel like I should do writing but I really want to play #Minecraft.

#WritersGroup #Writing #Gamer

Are you thinking of joining the #NaNoWriMo celebration in the month of November? If so, please check out our 1st week of suggested prep.
#NaNoWriMoprepWeek1 #Writersgroup by #RitaMockPikeAuthor #mockingowlroost #blog #nanowrimoprep #nanowrimo2023 #writer #writerscommunity

https://www.mockingowlroost.com/blog/writers-groups-wk1-prep/
(Pictured are a group of people sitting at a table with laptops open. They are smiling. The title and byline are in black print over the picture)