Published Paragraph Inspiration

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The other day I came across  Paragraph Planet - 

"  - a creative writing website which has been publishing one 75-word paragraph every day since November 2008. Famous authors, aspiring writers and occasional dabblers have all been involved, submitting a mixture of twist-in-the-tale flash fiction, evocative short, short fiction, openings of published novels or brief moments captured."

I  particularly liked the site's creator, Richard Hearn 's information on how long it would take him to read a submission - ''between 40 minutes and 6 months'' - so I found a paragraph 'what I  wrote' (to quote Ernie Wise) which is so far unpublished and posted it. I was very surprised, pleased and honoured to be told on Sunday that my paragraph was to be the one for the day, the next day. 

Here it is :

"The Last Time I Met My Father was on 4th October 2002. I remember it clearly, though the date itself holds no particular significance. He had been dead for fourteen years by this time so it was more than a little unnerving to meet him that day, though even that didn’t seem so strange at the time. I was behind him as he got off the bus and walked towards the door of The Crown, a few yards from the bus stop."

The paragraph is the beginning of a story in a short story collection which I am currently working on editing to publish. It is a number of years since I wrote on Writers Talkback, Writing Magazine's online discussion group and entered their competitions, leading to the publishing of the book One Word Challenge Anthology in which I contributed and co edited. I am easily led away from the practice of daily writing by the general challenges of everyday life and other 'projects' which draw on and even take advantage of, my short attention span, which gets ever shorter with age. Though posting on Twitter may not be classed as 'writing' as such, it allows me the writer's choice of procrastination, which I have written about on here many times. I defend myself, to myself, by sometimes researching and writing about something that I have read and discussed there which I may not otherwise have done. 

So, thank you again to Paragraph Planet for the inspiration and gentle push for me to write again daily, even if only for a short while. If having read, this you feel that you have a paragraph inside of you yearning to be read, then please do check out PP's website and have a go. Details below : 

("Get involved here. You can read over 4000 examples in the archive section. In the authors directory, you can read an example paragraph from all authors who've submitted, and also link to dedicated pages with more info about regular contributors. There's also a Blog Directory of authors who've contributed to the site. If you can - and there's no obligation - please support the site via Ko-Fi.")

Until tomorrow then ... ...

👍

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