No Additional Postage Necessary

We've all been there, staring at a blank page, a blinking cursor, waiting for our version of The Grapes of Wrath to emerge, fully formed from our imagination in one caffeine-fueled dash through a nearly perfect first draft. It never happens. Steinbeck's ghost wins that battle every time. We're blocked . . . worse than blocked, we're stifled, consigned to solitary confinement in a Turkish prison, chained to the bulkhead in a pirate frigate . . . whatever. You get the idea. Such was the goal Stacia and Nick Kelly shared with a room full of student writers at Write By The Rails's first annual Rising Writers' Workshop. To model how quickly otherwise blocked scribblers can beat back the demon, the Kellys passed around an old postcard with a chicken-scrawled message and instructed the room to write about it. The task was simple: write for ten minutes without lifting pen from paper and examine the wreckage afterward. We Wrote! This anthology is an eclectic mix of authors across all genres and student authors. Proceeds go to help fund the next Rising Writers Workshop as hosted by Write by the Rails, a chapter of the Virginia Writers Club.