Moonlight Musings: the Interactive Edition, #1

Greetings, word lovers. For quite some time, Poets United has offered Wednesday and Sunday prompts. That won’t change. We’ll just have a 3^rd prompt on the 3^rd Friday of every month, too. I hope we can use it to explore writing, reading, books, publishing... I wish us to share thoughts on the art, the craft, the magic (and business) of words.

The idea for this prompt came to me after an exchange on Instagram, about the following elfchen:

Hard

times turn

into easy grinning,

when love shows itself

thoughtful.

Through the comments, you can see that many people enjoyed it and found they could relate. Someone liked it so much that they reposted it. In the repost, someone else commented, “Sounds like a pipe dream… If I only could not choke on the smoke!”

Some of my Instagram friends were beyond outraged. They messaged me to show their support. One of my friends was so upset, that she informed me she was ready to “open a cyber-can of woopass”. I asked her to lower the can opener, and to let me deal with the issue. I did. The commenter’s attitude towards the poem changed, but the hostility didn’t decrease much—bitter people often stay bitter, methinks.

After my friend read the whole exchange, she asked, “How can you be so calm about this? They insulted your writing, belittled your relationship… And you didn’t even correct them!” My friend’s reaction made me wish for a place where I could discuss these sorts of topics with other writers and readers. And out of those thoughts, the Moonlight Musings: Interactive Edition was born.

I summarized my response to my (feisty) friend, in this poem:

So, for our 1^st Moonlight Musings: the Interactive Edition, I invite you to write a short article (in 369 words or fewer), which explores negative criticism. 

Add the direct link to your article to Mr. Linky. Visit other writers, read their thoughts. Let us critique each other’s words, constructively.

Please remember that this is a prose prompt, in article or essay format. Links to poems and short stories will be removed. We can get creative with it, even use quotes from our own work to make a point (as I did with the prompt itself), but our responses should be in article or essay form. Thank you!