January’s Pictonaut Challenge

The New Year is upon us, and with it comes the advent of new beginnings, of something fresh, vital, brimming with raw potentiality and the opportunities for outrageous shenanigans. But most of all the air is filled with the smell of hope. It smells of soap, and mint and freshly baked bread. The hope that maybe this year will be better than the last, or the hope that we’ll finally get round to doing that thing we’ve been meaning to do for years, or perhaps that this will be the year you “finally get your shit together.” A new year is ever a time of strange, unexplored frontiers and of terrifying unknowns. So strap on your sturdiest boots and prepare to venture into the land Beneath a Square Sun.

The picture that I’ve chosen for this month’s Pictonaut Challenge is the work of artist Scott Listfield, whose work primarily focuses around that astronaut chappy in a variety of urban and pop-culture soaked environs. With an astronaut featuring so prominently in the image there is a fairly obvious sci-fi flavouring to this month’s challenge, but that is only an obvious potential, subversion is encouraged.

For those who are stumbling bleary-eyed into the new year with no idea what I’m wittering on about, the concept is simple. One image, one month, one thousand words. Use the image above as prompt and inspiration and craft a fine and resplendent beast of a wordascope. Then at the end of the month I share around links to what everyone’s written.

Is your new year’s resolution to do more writing? Well look at this easy and convenient opportunity to do just that!