Hello!

Featuring those who submitted to the previous writing prompt from Live-Love-Write, here are the participants for this week, featured in style, along with information on the newest prompt. Please remember to fave this journal to help support your work and the prompt!

To submit to the writing prompt, please remember to put "for the Live-Love-Write writing prompt" in your artist's comments and submit to the Writing Prompt gallery for your feature every week. Entries without this info will be denied.

Please keep in mind that if you do not see your submission here, you have not read the submission rules and/or you have not included some variation of the aforementioned note in your artist's comments.

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Last Week's Writing Prompt

Theme:

Zero

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Admin's Choice:
:thumb364688351: MathFive years together
Plus
Ten years of friendship
Times
Seven Valentines
Divided by
Countless fights
Plus
You
Take the log of
Me
To the power of
Us
Add the infinity
Of this ring
Minus
My Love for you
Is
Zero
Perfect Zero

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Poetry
Counting DownFor centuries, "zero" had been nothing more than a mere notion
Waiting to be grasped by the minds of men.
But it was not a number which was to be discovered until
Forward-thinking mathematicians chanced upon the idea:
How can we count nothing?
For decades, the absence of a loved one
Can lead to mental insanity.
That person is both not there and there at the same time.
Yes, but no. No, but yes.
Is that what "zero" truly is?
For years after one's birth,
It seems as if the air itself is nothing.
The mere notion of "zero" seems quite plausible and also quite close.
For, if you cannot see it, how do you know
That there is anything there?
For months, the pondering of how the world began
becomes all-consuming and obsessive.
You wonder which theory is the right one
Or if you should turn to religion to find the answers.
How can something be created from nothing?
For days,  sleepless nights take over your world.
Lack of sleep suddenly seems as deadly as a knife in your stomach.
You can't ge :thumb364743834: Zero Voltage GravesThey say that one is the loneliest number, well then they never met none.
“I am an empty hole, I am nothing, but another one of your goals”
There was nothing inside her, nothing inside me.
It floats in the air like a clock ticking away.
It reminds us of the impieties within ourselves.
It reminds us of what is meant to be filled.
One is the greatest number.
One is something we were never to be.
Can you find the question that leads to nothing?
As we search and move forward we realize there is no way back.
The numbers keep building until zero.
The cycle begins.
A child with bright eyes and a toothless smile.
She drifts away into the dead sun.
Light fades on the scene, I watch, trembling with the script in my hand.
Three pages of lies.
No matter how long or the path, we return, the outcome is always the same.
We are born and no matter the path, we die. Countdown to BreakupThree
Is the number of chances
You got.
Two
Eyes are glimpsing at another person
As I speak.
One
Of the biggest lies you've told me is that
I'm the only one for you.
Zero
Is the amount of tears I'll shed when you
Disappear in my rear view mirror. DisparityNothing, that's what there is:
The existentialist reality casts shades of black.
There's no bottom, no rock to hit, and no oblivion:
The clinging hopes being to realize some flower-filled daydream.
Life isn't annulled, days bleed into one another:
There be still meaning in this utterly prolific delusion.
The insignificance of thought and action:
A blank slate, a void, it's naught but our lives.
We make our own light, the human condition:
Blinding radiance pervades the colossal abyss in which we reside.
Hunger for meaning drives us to devour the light:
The two extremes smash together and meld into an opaque globe of confusion.
The very meaning is reciprocal:
Life's a zero-sum game. :thumb363650915: ZeroOur teacher, who worshipped Shakespeare as a God,
and had a whole stack of tragic bibles to choose from,
she scrawled our grades from I to X at the top of our work,
forever stuck in the past.
Our class of low-achievers looked at combinations of Is and Vs;
they cheered or grumbled, moaned or smiled, and stared comparing.
I never learned my roman numerals, but it didn’t matter;
there isn’t one for zero.
Our teacher, who bowed down to crumbling skeletons,
with her brain stuffed full of useless knowledge,
she drew an O Julius Caesar would have t’sked at, and this:
“Plagiarism will not be tolerated.”
And I, who spent a week with a dictionary in hand,
pouring over words I had no business knowing,
spell-checking everything and pulling out grammar books,
I snapped. ZeroYou cannot create something
From nothing at all;
However, I disagree.
If there must always be something,
There can never be nothing;
Correct?
Zero is nothing.
It is the embodiment
Of emptiness, symbolic of
An entity without form,
Without mass or volume;
Nothing.
So,
If something must always
Exist, then why
Does nothing exist?
Questions unanswered. ZeroMany things go with this
But, I still miss
The lost time   
The flipping dime
I feel lost
Its not worth the cost
I have rules and precautions
Watch out for lee washin'
Don't break the rule
I have to school
Zero tolerance
I just want to dance
So, what
I got that mutt
Let it go now
I got to go, ciao
It's fun to lay low
I have to go
One contest
I'm the best
What's better than one
Zero or none
I'll win the race
You can't replace
I got it covered
I just hovered
It's not bad
Admit your glad
I'm here now
Oh wow
You can't beat me
I'll win you see
It's so lazy
Too easy
I'm number one
You're zero or none
Let me fly
I'll reach the sky
You're too shy
Don't let me lie
I'm #1
You're 0 or none...

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Prose
ZeroMy first mistake was thinking you were the absence of value. You proved to me you were the value of absence. I was expecting nothingness. Instead, I found existence.
My second mistake was looking down upon you as simply the origin of a system of coordinates. You quickly showed me nothing can exist in space and time without referencing you first. In my head, you were just a special point. In reality, you were the center of the universe.
My third mistake was coming up with the idea that, had I added you to my life, I would be the same. You were a neuter element; neither positive, nor negative. You weren't supposed to change anything about me. However, in my haste, I chose the wrong operation.
I multiplied by you. And now, I am the same as you are: nothing. Dragged to the same non-level. Appointed no influence. Reduced to non-existence.
And since there cannot be two zeros, we are now essentially the same being.
Together, we can reach the impossible. Together, we can break the rules and th :thumb365359236: ZeroI crack my knuckles nervously over the desktop. My pencil's sharp enough to poke a hole in a balloon. And I'm sweating bullets. I crammed all night for this! 


A triangle is a total of 180 degrees...



 I'll do just fine! 


A square has 360...
And when the guy in front of me backhands the paper to me, my mind goes blank, like someone had just run an eraser across my brain and wiped it all white. I put my head down on my hands and zero in on the first question, hoping it'll be multiple-choice. Story problems -- CRUD!!! At this point, I know I'm doomed. I put my pencil to the paper, and my hand starts scribbling math all on its own. I zip down the paper at top speed -- of course this test had to be timed; My brain's already melting down like ice cream on a 90-degree day from all the stress. Oh. This answer's 90 degrees...


"Pencils down, please!" calls the teacher's scratchy voice.
My pencil goes dow :thumb365247659:

Mature Content

Automechanical Soul
It's a feeling that's not really hate, and it's not really fear. There's not even any loathing. Not quite pity, not quite love. It sits quietly in the middle, balanced on a multi-directional tightrope, highly strung and thrumming with... something that's very similar to nothing.  
It's a feeling of malignant emptiness, a clawing lack of any hope, for you, for us, for any real feelings for you. You could be run down on the street in front of me, and what would I feel? The tick of the cosmic body-counter dropping a number. If I could save you by dragging you from the road, I wouldn't, because my automechanical soul would deem it a waste of effort to save a neutral value. Hand me a gun and point it at your head; I'd walk away. Your blood might get on my clothes.
It's the feeling of my inablilty to fathom why anybody else cares, either. Not that I begrudge them for doing so, but it seems like a strange concept to bestow feelings onto a void so incapable of returning even a smidgeon. Y

Mature Content

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This week's writing prompt, from April 15 to April 24, is:

Write anything that features one or more of the following:
- a maze
- fire
- three different countries
- the phrase "Actually, it is rocket science."

Do you know how much I loved this week's entries? It took me 53 minutes to pick my favorite two.

This time, you do not have to include all four of the prompt conditions. However, there is an element of combination: This is meant as a challenge to your creativity, so the more conditions you use, the greater the prompt's benefit is for you. That being said, I fully understand the difficulty of incorporating four very different prompts into one piece, so we'll try this out for the week and see how it goes.

Also, I'd like to address some concern about the prompt, and make it clear that the entries are listed in the order they appear in the folder- reverse order of submission.

Good luck with this week, everyone!