Current mood:	creative
Current music:	Matchbox Twenty, 'You Won't Be Mine'

Announcing the (Elizabeth) Smart Fic Challenge!
I might be insane, but I do know good poetry when I read it.

Elizabeth Smart (1913-1986) was a Canadian-born author, journalist, and mild obsessive. When she read a book of George Barker's poetry in a bookshop in England, she fell deeply, intensely in love with him; on the strength of his poetry alone, she was known to ask people at parties if they knew him, as "he [was] the man [she was] going to marry." Eventually she struck up a correspondence with Barker, and after a time she paid for him--and his wife Jessica--to come to live with her in the United States. Smart and Barker carried on a relationship for quite a few years; despite the fact that they never married, Smart had four of Barker's children (he eventually fathered fifteen children with four different women).

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept is Smart's chronicle of her relationship with Barker. Written in lush, prose poetry, it's not a book you should read for its plot; its strength lies in its gorgeous phrases, images, and evocative emotional insights.

Quotations.

Other selected poems.

THE CHALLENGE

Take a look at the quotes and poems provided on the pages linked above. Choose one (or two or three or four...) to riff off of in a fic of your own. Incorporate Smart's lines thematically, within the narrative, as a piece of dialogue, as an epigraph, title--however it strikes you to use them, use them. Write your story, then post a link in the comments of this post. All response fics will be linked at the Smart Fic Archive Page, unless the author specifies otherwise.

If this is the first time you've ever heard of Elizabeth Smart, don't worry--prior knowledge of her work is not required of anyone who wants to answer the challenge. By Grand Central Station... is a book that can be enjoyed in pieces just as thoroughly as if you were to read the whole thing; the quotes provided are meant to spark off inspiration for your own work, not to drag you into slavish reiteration of Smart's. Feel free to take the non-contextualized quotes at face value, or, if you're suitably impressed, find a copy of the book and read it; either way, the end result I'm going for here is fic. Lots of fic, for preference. *g*

What if you choose a quote that someone else has already used in a fic? Go right ahead and use it yourself. Given the limited number of quotes available--and the extremely evocative and freely-interpretive nature of many of the quotes--some overlap is inevitable. The only proviso on this point is that the stories that share quotes should, ideally, be somewhat different from each other. As long as you don't write identical stories, you can definitely share quotes. Again, the object is to get some fic; I'd rather see people overlapping their quote choices than not writing at all.

THE FANDOMS

Open to any fandom you wanna write. (Although extra points will be given for Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly or Early Edition fic. Because I have the right to play favourites. *g*) Be creative!

THE DEADLINE

Eh, screw the deadline. I've been convinced by the arguments pointing out that people don't need something else added to their holiday crunches. *g*

Again, those links are:

Quotations from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept.

Other selected poems.

Another biography, with a picture of Elizabeth Smart.

On your marks, get set...WRITE!!