Latest posts tagged with #WRITECBC on Bluesky
A big thank you to @cbcreative.bsky.social for running #WriteCBC. I have been taking part since 2020 and learnt so much through the monthly challenges. I have also been introduced to so many gifted writers and most of all had a lot of fun. Many thanks again.
Maybe one day… #WriteCBC will return.
Honoured for this on the last #WriteCBC, especially with one that was very personal. It’s been so much fun, have connected with some wonderful people and hope the community continues even when the monthly competition doesn’t ❤️
Thanks to everyone who joined us for #WriteCBC this month, we’ve loved reading your entries!
Shout-outs go to: @rustomdavar.bsky.social, @writeywright.bsky.social, @lyndseycroal.bsky.social & @1956cursons-69.bsky.social 💐
Our #WriteCBC runners-up are @moomin1.bsky.social and @sarahwriteaway.bsky.social! 👏
Huge congratulations to you both, you’ve each won a £50 course discount!
We can’t wait for you to join one of our courses soon:
Congratulations to our final #WriteCBC winner, @faye-dg-author.bsky.social! 🏆
You’ve won an online writing course (worth up to £230). We absolutely loved the reflective atmosphere you created in this scene.
Read the winning entry here:
Cheers and merriment echoing. Wind whipping bare torsos. Salt spray paints a warning, leaping and smashing over the pebbles.
Crowds run haphazardly into the sea, bracing for inevitable freezing shock.
Sharp inhales. Screams.
Turning sharply, too late. The sea sweeps and later spits out. #WriteCBC
Previous Me would cuss out the very idea of doing a runner after Ruby slumped back onto the hotel bed, not in ecstasy, but looking, feeling, seeming… dead. Like in what world would a decent person do that.
But here we are innit? #writeCBC
It's strange, isn't it? To mourn a person you perpetually detested. To feel nostalgic over one's own misery.
The surgeon's face looms, gown tied, mask on.
"Are you ready?"
To say goodbye to the person I was? Not entirely.
To welcome the person I've always felt inside? Most definitely. #WriteCBC
#WriteCBC 'Bye,' the confident biro stabbed; my morning porridge juddered. Two years of helpful hints had morphed to targets; suspicious friends self-protectively-increasingly-distanced. Backstabbing? Paranoia? A torn note on my laptop; liquid spilled on its keys. Murmuring. Secret glances. 'Stop!'
His hand shakes around the glass before what’s left of it spills down my cheek. I think of my mother, asleep in bed, and my dad telling me to mind how I go. Maybe this is what happens when your life slips away. You think of the people you love. All the people you’ve let down by loving you. #WriteCBC
The couple next to us were glum-grey ignoring the puttering of questions from their toddler. “I don’t want us to end up like them,” I say. My husband spins his empty glass around, his ring hitting it each orbit. The pub went dark, like hope was turning the lights off as it left. #writecbc
Scratchy callouses above my palm, a new layer added every time they hold my weight. Permanent ridges on the pads of each finger, the cost of every tune. Every line a sign of their duty. A hand that saved me more times than I can count with these fingers. And yet I can't return the favour. #WriteCBC
She didn’t get the job. They made a night of it anyway. With piggybacks and karaoke-words they couldn’t say. They paid a homeless guy ten bucks to fake-officiate their wedding.
Ten days to leave the country.
She told him what she would have asked.
He told her how he would have answered.
#WriteCBC
So, farewell then, #writecbc
Monthly tester of our creative minds.
Surely, it was but six months ago this started. No? Oh, how time flies.
140, 280, now 300 letters to test our ability. Seems so many, always too few.
On we tread to challenges, new,
A few we might conquer, most we'll be less successf
The car was stifling against the cool glass. I watched my parents, aunt & uncle outside our home. Chatting, as if we weren't bound for an unheard-of Andalucian town. Forever. A flurry of hugs. I closed my eyes. Car doors. We pull away, my heart stretching with it. @cbcreative.bsky.social #WriteCBC
#WriteCBC "I think I've got everything." Her voice was as bright as her tear flooded eyes, looking anywhere but at him. She was clutching her small bag so tightly, screwing it into a ball as crushed and twisted as the ache in his chest. He had to let her leave, but...
"You do know I'm crying too?"
'I will look after him,’ she’d said. Earnest pleading in her eyes. Go, don’t make it worse. They’re in that metal box now, hurtling through space. My criminal record made me ineligible. Some of us might survive—I’m going to be one of them. And I’ll see them again one day, I'm sure of it. #WriteCBC
My finger hovers over his face. Fine hair untouched by time, those cheeks, that dimple. Acid burn in my eyes. Grief dissolves my core.
‘You ready, Mum?’
I click off my phone as if caught looking at porn. ‘Yes! Can’t have you late for Freshers’ Week!’
Unless he smiles, the dimple has gone. #WriteCBC
A mini-scene about a goodbye. #WriteCBC
The restaurant features fresh-faced waitresses - they hire me anyway. I hide my punk, but it leaks – I’m fired my second shift. I don’t go home, I plunk myself at the bar - managers scowl. A friend and I drink. Okay, we get hammered. I unfurl my tail. Goodbye fawning, hello eyeliner.
#WriteCBC
The gawking mob divides for the stomping entourage. Paramedics slide you catatonic onto a stretcher. The rest of the Exploratorium's erased into a haze. Foucault’s pendulum veers wildly off-course.
I rest my shaking palm on your cheek. They wipe vomit from within your oxygen mask.
But I-
#WriteCBC
She knows.
I am by the door. She buries her head in my chest and I put my nose in her shiny dark hair, I have been inhaling her for nineteen years. I spot some bits of food in her hair, a trace of peanut butter, a flake of tuna mayonnaise. She often uses her hair as a serviette. #WriteCBC
Have you heard of Dissociative Identity Disorder?
I shake my head.
It used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder.
Is it curable? I ask the therapist.
Do you want to be cured?
I don't expect that question - do I want to say goodbye to me?
I don't know, I whisper hoping I can't hear me. #WRITECBC
I seize my sword, and step forward, my boots filling his vision. He stills. Slowly, he lifts his head—like a condemned man facing a sentence already.
“Look who’s bent over now” I whisper in venom.
I drive the blade through the back of his neck, pinning him—and our fate—to the floor. #WriteCBC
A death rattle vibrated from the sunken figure on the bed. A dozen faces held their own breath while the wheezing dragged on. I looked among them, guessing their hopes for a time when their matriarch had given up her grasp. Then my uncle announced, 'she's gone'. #WriteCBC
She knows. Even though she can’t speak.
I am by the door. She buries her head in my chest and I put my nose in the shiny dark hair I’ve been inhaling for 19 years. I spot traces of food in her hair, peanut butter, a flake of tuna mayonnaise. She often uses her hair as a serviette. #WriteCBC
Jo. awkward in his uniform, kissed Lydia’s damp cheek before joining the lads marching away. He didn’t look back, felt his shoulders loosen. He’d seen her dress get tighter, her hands straying to her belly. War scared him less than a future filled with nappies and responsibilities #WriteCBC
