douglas e riggs

Early in the week recent returnee to the Berkshires and fellow writer Ms Frost alerted friends via Facebook of Write Anything’s Form and Genre Challenge 2012. The challenge this week is as bare boned as it gets. Third Person POV, 1500 words. A vast majority of fiction is written in the third person, and 1500 words ain’t much. But it is significant enough to make me budget my time this week (and that’s the whole point of the FGC). After all, putting one’s work out there in the public is kind of a scary thing and I want to offer something that doesn’t completely suck. So I’m happy to say I’ve prepared something which I’ll post here tomorrow per Write Anything’s entry guidelines.

Some things to know ahead of time.

Number 1, I self imposed the ‘genre’ of farce for this week, as I didn’t see it listed later in the year. Sure, there is ‘comedy’ for the week of March 18, but I trust I can mix things up a bit and sufficiently de-farce-ify that entry so that it doesn’t conflict.

Number 2, there is a lot of fantasy football lingo bandied about by the office drones in the story. It can be off-putting to those (including my wife and editor) who have zero working knowledge of that recreational pursuit. To these people I say that the fantasy football stuff is supposed to be alienating and inconsequential. The fact that these folks would rather discuss a topic like this than do actual work at their jobs tells you everything you need to know about their office environment.  So if your eyes glaze over at terms like ‘flex’ that’s a good thing.

So yeah. Tune in late tomorrow, or Monday, or whenever to read “Bear in the Break Room.” I hope you all find some pleasure in it.