January #BlogBattle: Blank

/ Rachael Ritchey
Right-click & ‘Save As’ this image to share on social media!

January 2021 Blog Battle

Can you believe it’s 2021 already? Wow. Happy new year to you! The last year flew by in a whirlwind of I don’t know what, but now that a new year has begun we have new hopes, dreams, and challenges to face. We hope you’ll continue to join with us throughout the coming year for our monthly word prompt!

If you missed the announcement yesterday, we made a couple of minor changes to the battles that we hope will encourage you throughout the year with plenty of time (two weeks) to write your story (or chapter, if you are using #BlogBattle as inspiration for a serial story or book), plenty of time to read (approximately 1-2 weeks), and MORE words to work within (up to 2000 words)!

Our word this month is:

Blank

You can start writing at any time, but make sure you post your story by the

15th of January

to have a link shared here and on social media.

(We’ll have a grace period the 1st few months)

Once you’ve posted your story to your blog, put a link to it in the comments section, and we’ll add your story to the Battle Stories Line-up post that goes live the 3rd Friday of the month (the same as the post-by date).

Make sure to check back and read some of the stories of your fellow battlers. Leave comments to encourage these writers. And go a step further in supporting one another by sharing each other’s stories on your own blog or social media, whatever you’re most comfortable with!

Basic Rules:

The Prompt Word will be given the First FRIDAY of every month.

Post your story by the 3rd Friday of the same month (this is the same date as the Stories post goes live).

RULES

  1. minimum 250 to 2000 words max (give or take a few)
  2. fictional tale (or true if you really want)
  3. Any genre that fits within PG-13 (or less)-type Content – let’s keep this family friendly!
  4. Your story must contain the randomly chosen word(s) and/or be centered around the word meaning in a way that shows it is clearly related.
  5. Go for the entertainment value!
  6. Put a link back to your #BlogBattle Short Story in the comments section
  7. Please tweet and otherwise share your battler buddies’ stories across social media.
    1. Use the hashtag #BlogBattle when tweeting all the stories so we can cross-share.
  8. Have fun!
Any photos included with the prompt are only for your benefit as a pinch of inspiration. They don’t need to dictate your theme or story genre. Only the Word of the Month counts! Photos are thanks to public domain photo sharing sites like Unsplash and Pixabay.

90 thoughts on “January #BlogBattle: Blank”

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    • As I mentioned below to Marian. Bit of leniency due to the changes so a bit late will be overlooked this month. New prompt is first Friday of the month. Story post goes live today. The idea being to give people two weeks to read other contributions before the next prompt comes out.

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  23. Here I am, about to go to bed, and I realize that we already had the first Friday of the month… Wait a minute… Was it the first Friday, or the first Friday after a first Monday (I swear I read something like this on one of the blogs recently…)? So here I am, checking. And indeed the prompt is posted.

    Hmm… where will this take me? Especially when I want to make it a serial story…

    Lots to think about.

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      • I think it’s fair to say that today went inconveniently horizontal, since down hill would have been an advantage. I drove my partner to her hospital appointment (my neck and shoulder are still sore but now good enough to drive) and when the day was done, the car wouldn’t start. There was nowhere near enough of a slope to achieve a bump-start, and neither of us was really in a fit state for pushing a car.
        I’ll probably write a blog about that sometime 🙂
        So for next month, I need a theme of carpark, battery, stranded, or something similar…
        On second thoughts, let’s not. The universe has been known to have a nasty sense of humour about these things.

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      • On the plus-side, the evenings are already noticeably longer, and I do notice because there’s an alarm on my phone that means “if you haven’t fed the chickens yet, it’s overdue” and that has to be steadily put later. It’s a matter of minutes, but it does give me a sense of things “brightening up”.

        On the negative side, I shuffled around the house Monday morning in search of painkillers grumbling to myself that I hadn’t done anything strenuous, so how did I do the damage? Eventually I remembered the two dozen hay bales I moved Sunday, so mind and body are failing together.

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  26. Happy new year, everyone! I know I’ve been a bit AWOL — for even longer than usual. I’m really sorry for all of the outstanding comments and stories I’ve been meaning to reply to/read and comment, I hope to be getting around to these shortly. I’d like to get back into the rhythm of these blogs once more, as opposed to my scatterbrained approach of the past few months. Perhaps that can be my resolution for the year? 🙂 (I know we’ve got new rules for when we’re supposed to read, but there are some great looking stories from Nov/Dec, as well as some serialised stories I want to keep up with!) I hope you’re all well, your loved ones too. 🙂 I like the updated new BB style, very cool! I wrote this, the first of the 2k stories, on the drive back from Vienna.

    https://joshuainsole.com/short-stories/earth-exe/

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    • Happy New Year, Joshua! Always happy to have you here abouts! I am hoping this clean slate on the new year with the changes to BB will help me get back into the rhythm also! 🙂 I’ve told my kids often enough that I’m the Absentminded Professor…I profess to be absentminded. That’s a bit like scatterbrained. 😉 You’re off to a great start to this new year, though! I hope you had fun in Vienna!

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    • You’ve been AWOL Joshua?? I’ve not written a post for here in two months coming up three!! Not short of ideas though, just time management and a feeling of despair 😳

      Hopefully catch up on this one shortly

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    • Top shelf work, Joshua. Loved it (especially the fact that no-one got dismembered along the way). Not sure I buy the pink pyjamas but loved the fact that you spelled ‘arse’ and ‘pyjamas’ the way we do in Oz. Old Groucho Marx line: Last night I dreamt I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. What he was doing in my pyjamas I’ll never know. 🙂

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    • Absolutely Esra, everyone is welcome as long as the content complies with the rules, which are aimed at not being offensive to potential readers. Arabic stories are fine…although if they are written in Arabic I’m in real trouble trying to read it! Looking forward to seeing you here 😊

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    • Oh, that’s lovely! ❤ Yes, as Gary said, you can definitely join. Most of the time people can do "Google Translate," (it won't be a perfect translation of your stories) but we who don't read Arabic might still be able to read and enjoy them!

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