The pain was too much.
After many hours of thought and laborious decision making, I must back pedal, and declare not one, but two second-runner-ups in Rhino Writing Contest #3 because...
The dog alone is worth a million SBD in Twilight of the Long Road Come.
@Negativer, you win! The real-life dog who inspired your Ringo in Long Road has a story so powerful, it explains (really!) why this superlative author keeps writing such catastrophic tales of apocalyptic horror.
I want to award this dog another life, but this is all I can do for now:
He was a great dog.
We had to move
and gave him away
a good 6 months later, he found us
it wasn't states or countries away; we were still out in the country,
maybe no more than 10 or 12 miles away, but he found us
we had to take him back
as a kid it destroyed me the first time
as a kid i just about died the second time
*** it was this wonderful thing where ***
THERE HE WAS coming down the road
and it was a one day reunion, then he was gone again
This dialogue took place last week, when I was trying to read stories submitted to the contest (deadline December 12, and I started reading immediately), and I couldn't just read Negativer's story straight through. I had to stop after every sentence to exclaim over the great prose, the vivid images, and above all, a collie named Ringo.
Today I had trouble finding it again, but Mrs. Negativer came through, with a disclaimer:
morodiene 🍣🍱👹 - Today at 9:53 AM
sorry neg, don't read this
to remember that which created the bitterness deep within
negativer 🥓 - Today at 9:54 AM
ah, 'last tuesday'
back when things were simple
and life was lovely, like a lovely weather.
(See my previous post if you wonder what 'a lovely weather' has to do with this.)
That's our other collie, Prince, and me; Negativer hasn't located photos of his own dog from childhood
Judging a Fiction Contest
I'm amazed at the variety of stories that emerge, and how hard it is to say one is
BETTER
than another. What if a novice author is really stirring and memorable? @ahmadmanga's "Your Heart Would Remember"--a child's drawing, the dawning of recognition--really did give me goosebumps.
So much depends on the words we choose, and how much white space we surround them with.
~Rhino likes white space~
Pixabay photo by Christel • Age 54 • Lille/France • Member since Nov. 11, 2016 • #145
Check out all her photos - they're fantastic