White Wonderland

Crystal rain falling
Sprinkled all across the land
Winter has arrived

Icy wind blowing
Snowflakes dancing on the breeze
Shine in the moonlight

Magic in the air
Virgin snow brightens the world
A white wonderland

What If? Writing Prompts: Holidays II

And so we reach the end of another year! To celebrate, here are some new “What If?” Writing Prompts for you, once again set to the theme of the holiday season! See what sorts of fun stories you can spin from these ideas! Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

What If - Parchment and QuillWhat if… you discovered a group of elves making toys in your house?

What if… you received a Christmas present from a secret admirer?

What if… one of Santa’s reindeer showed up lost outside your home a week before Christmas?

What if… one year, in a “Secret Santa” fashion, you and your family drew names to choose each other’s New Year’s resolutions?

What if… everyone took time to do volunteer work during the holiday season?

Have fun writing your own holiday tales!

If you have any “What If?” writing prompt suggestions (for any theme), please feel free to share them in the comments below. Ideas I like may be featured in future “What If?” posts, with full credit and a link to your blog (if you have one)! Also, if you’ve written a piece based on an idea you’ve found here, be sure to link back to the respective “What If?” post. I would love to see what you’ve done with the prompt! Thank you!

Word of the Week: Paramount

Word: paramount

Pronunciation: PAR-ə-mount

Part of Speech: adjective

Definition: more important than anything else; supreme

Source: Oxford Dictionaries


No, not the movie studio nor the city in California. Today’s Word of the Week is a good one to use for the most important things in your stories. Sometimes when you need to convey a tone of great urgency in your writing, adjectives like “vital” and “crucial” simply aren’t enough. For those events that just can’t wait, “paramount” may be exactly the word you need!

Something described as “paramount” is of the utmost importance. The word arose in the mid 16th century and comes from the Anglo-Norman French adverb paramont, meaning “above”. This adverb comprises two Old French roots: the preposition par “by” and the adverb amont “above”.

While it’s commonly used as an adjective for extremely important things or events, “paramount” can also be used to describe people with supreme power, such as a “paramount” chief. Based on its definition, I assume this word sits at the very end of the importance spectrum and thus should only be used for the most critical of events. If your characters tend to face situations that must be dealt with right away, you may have room for some “paramount” points in your stories!

What are your thoughts on this word? Any suggestions for future “Word of the Week” featured words?

Blog Makeover!

Oh yes, The Wolfe’s (Writing) Den is getting a major revamp! After two and a half years of blogging, I decided it was high time for a makeover. If you’re one of my regular readers, you may have noticed some changes to my site this weekend. In case you’re wondering what this update is all about, here’s a quick rundown of what’s new.

New theme!

The biggest change to my blog is the addition of a new theme: Divi by Elegant Themes! While I was happy with my previous theme – the Scribble child theme for the Genesis Framework by StudioPress – it did have one fundamental flaw: it was not mobile-responsive. With at least half your potential audience wielding smartphones, accessibility through mobile devices is extremely important for blogs these days, so I felt the need to upgrade to a highly customizable and responsive new theme for a more professional look. Hopefully now my blog will be much more aesthetically appealing to you mobile readers out there!

New logo and banner

JCW-Round-Logo-02With a fresh theme comes a fresh image! Every serious website needs its own unique image, so I had a talented young artist I know design a logo and banner with a couple of new characters for my blog. Introducing Jay and Wolfe, my new “blog mascots”! You’ll see them on my homepage and in the headers of my social media profiles. I think they add a little more charm to my blog, don’t you?

(Coming soon!) Guest posts and Indie Writer Spotlight interviews

Since I started blogging, I’ve been terribly possessive of my content. Every single one of the 400+ posts that have been published here was written by me, and the closest I’ve ever come to letting another author create content for my site is sharing infographics and accepting submissions for “What If?” Writing Prompts.

Now that I’m ready to start taking blogging a little more seriously, I’m considering opening up submissions for guest posts in the near future. I’d also like to continue my Indie Writer Spotlight segment soon by interviewing more indie authors about their books. So if you’re a blogger looking to expand your network and/or an indie author hoping to gain more exposure for your book, be sure to keep an eye out for updates about guest post exchanges and author interview requests! Information will be available on my Contact page, so feel free to send me a message!

That’s it for this news update! Minor features will continue to roll out as I find my way around this new theme, so expect to see some changes around the site over at least the next few weeks. I hope you’ll enjoy this major update of my blog! Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Butterfly Garden

Flutter
Beautiful wings
Gently kiss the flowers
Paint the world in vivid colors
Dawn breaks
Touch the dewdrops on the petals
Brighten up the garden
Golden sunrise
Rainbow


Response to Jane Dougherty’s Poetry Challenge #8: write a butterfly cinquain, a nine-line poem with a 2-4-6-8-2-8-6-4-2 syllable pattern (thus resembling a butterfly). Yes, I know the poem doesn’t have to be about an actual butterfly, but the theme was too fitting to resist. I hope you enjoyed my poem! Thanks for the challenge, Jane!

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