WRITING ASSIGNMENT #41

For today, craft a detailed Wikipedia entry for the sadly forgotten Swedish anarchist Lev Nyksson. He was the 19th century man who almost single-handedly brought a grand reception for the Stockholm Merchant's Association to its knees using a troupe of black-market circus animals and a network of well-placed explosives. A literary man, Nyksson finished fourteen novels and three books of verse before falling in with a group of Scandinavian radicals that helped him formulate his plan. He is also notorious in Sweden for claiming several well-known inventions as his own. Among these: the motion picture, the automated sewing machine, the grammar of Esperanto, the modern chimney, and the waffle iron.

Do some research and help create a place within our collective memory for this complicated and neglected historical figure.

Send it to loganliterary@gmail.com

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #40

For today, write a short story (maybe 600 words or so, but feel free to go over) about a plucky teenaged dragon named Ifans, who lives in a fantastical world of delight and magic and perpetual sunshine. He really loves garlic and was born with a noticeably weak breath of fire. You can imagine the hostility of his peer group regarding this last eccentricity.

So.... take your finished story and crack open your thesaurus. Sentence by sentence, replace each action verb attributable to Ifans with another verb taken from the thesaurus entry for the original word. Pick the most far-reaching, barely-synonymous entry for the best results.

Now you have a new, vaguely off-putting, story. Cheers!

BONUS ASSIGNMENT:

Take your post-Thesaurus roster of new verbs and use each of them sequentially in a story of similar length detailing an hour-long adventure of Tom Nichols, an account supervisor for Pensacola & Kollecki Business Machines, LTD. Today is the day he hopes to coax the Turkish government into severing its ties with IBM in order to sign up with P&K. It is the most important pitch of his life.

Send both stories (or just the one) to loganliterary@gmail.com

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #39.5

BONUS ASSIGNMENT! (thanks to a major bummer in the world of music.)

Captain Beefheart died today. In honor of the legendary weirdo's passing, write a surreal piece of short fiction including the line "I'm gonna take up with a mermaid, and leave you land-lubbin' women alone." (a lyric from the Beefheart gem "Grow Fins".)

Fans of The Big Lebowski probably know this track better.

Send your tale to loganliterary@gmail.com

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #39

For today, make your least favorite person (with whom you've actually had contact) into an unequivocably flawless superhero. Write a brief adventure for this superhero, who is admired the world over for his/her perfection. They don't need to have tights and the whole bit, but they must be a Hero to billions, and they cannot be merely concealing their imperfections and doubts from an adoring public. End your tale with a large group of assembled persons smiling in unison.

grudgingly send it to loganliterary@gmail.com

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #38

For today, let's dig deep:

First, sit down with a sharpened pencil and at least 10 sheets of unlined paper.

Next, write a brief story (250-500 words) detailing your doings between waking up and eating lunch earlier today.

Then, sit for a few minutes and try to think of something other than words and writing.

After your mind has settled, take the next piece of paper and begin writing with great speed in a stream-of-conscious-style. Begin by describing what went on internally while you were crafting the brief story about your morning. From there, go wherever your hand takes you without lifting your pencil from the paper for a significant (more than a few seconds) period of time. Write until you run out of paper.

Finally, take the final product and scan and e-mail it to loganliterary@gmail.com

(We're aware this may seem a convoluted exercise, but the results should be worth it.)

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #37

For today, write the bibliography for a short manual titled "More Effective Micromanagement: A Beginner's Guide."

Send it to: loganliterary@gmail.com

As a refresher:

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #36

For today, set a two-character short story within a local art gallery. Food-processing company Kraft Foods has offered to purchase a new 12'x18' painting provocatively titled "Giant Corporations Have Ruined Our Digestive Tracts: We Ought to Be Angry (!!!)" Your story will feature the gallery owner and the artist, lifelong friends, ruminating over the ethical dynamics of the deal.

Send it to: loganliterary@gmail.com