Group Description

Let's call it a slip of the mind, perhaps a collusion of the unlikely. Contrary to the old Freudian saw, the parapraxes here very well may not originate in the unconscious; on the other hand, there's no reason why they can't.

The gist is a turning on an idea or phrase that may or may not embody its untampered-with source. Tampering is, in fact, a swell way to go.

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PARAPRAXIS PLUNGE I (challenge in 600 words or less)

Your character, U, drive(s) (snorkels, hang-glides, eavesdrops, dreams) by a billboard (wiki entry, piece of conversation, song) that goes "abcdefg." But your character/U see(s) (hears, smells) "abQdefg," or "abcdWfg," or even "aVcdeYg" (are you feeling Fellini yet?). For the next day, night, moon, decade – your character Ks and/or Ss and keeps J'ing in all/some of his/her affairs because she/he happened to QWY while unicycling (wheelchairing, walking) by that billboard (pillow, Rorschach, et al). And because of all this: X, U-1, or Q-to-the-nth!

If you need more than 600 words, you're a big boy/girl - take 'em. Power to the people, and you're the one wearing it. (Why 600 words? * Bonus! If you write a jam up story or poem, you might just be able to tweak it to fit when another NPR Three-Minute Fiction challenge rolls along. Don't see why F'nauters shouldn't be sweeping the TMF awards.)

Or whatever you'd like. We admire rule-busters here.

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Mini-challenge: keep a log of your personal parapraxes and post them on the discussion board, at the very least. Surely some of them will transmogrify into poems. Or memoir. Or stories. Etc.

In short: juxtapose the uneasy, the ridiculous, the unthinkable. Slip away, twist some notions, play some games: this is loose.

Get going, the first cut is the sweetest.