What’s your metaphor? A philosophy & a contest

This month our featured writer is Sue William Silverman. In fact, episode 3 of our podcast features our chat with Sue! And our Plume Petite Patreon supporters will receive our August digital edition with Sue’s letter of encouragement and some of Sue’s creative work. If you’re not familiar with her as an author and teacher, you’re in for a treat! I’ve decided to dub her the Metaphor Maven and you’ll see why, not only in reading her creative work, but in her writing about craft.

“Memoir with a View: The Window as Motif and Metaphor, in Creative Nonfiction” (This article originally appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Oct./Nov. 20.14)

In our chat, Sue spoke of Route 17 in New Jersey (and cruising around in a gold Plymouth) as a metaphor for her life at that time, the period she wrote about in her latest book How to Survive Death and other Inconveniences.

And a metaphor contest was born!

What’s your metaphor?

Find an image that represents a metaphor for a particular time in your (or your character’s) life. For me it is an image of a bouquet of sunflowers that are dying, representing a time when my sister had experienced a cardiac arrest and then her stage 4 breast cancer flared up and people kept sending flowers. I became obsessed with photographing the flowers as the petals withered and died. It was not about the dying, but about finding the beauty in spite of, well, everything. This is something my sister is good at—seeing or being the beauty everywhere (She’s still here, by the way, and doing great).

Win the Plume Metaphor Contest, and you receive a copy of How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences!

Plume’s metaphor contest rules

1. Share the image on Instagram with a caption of 100 words or fewer explaining the metaphor. Use the hashtag #plumemetaphor and tag @plumeforwriters and @suewilliamsilverman.
2. OR Share the image on Twitter along with a tweet of 100 words or fewer explaining the metaphor. Use the hashtag #plumemetaphor and tag @plumeforwriters and @suesilverman
3. Email your image and 100 word explanation of the metaphor to encouragement@plumeforwriters.org with the subject line #plumemetaphor.

note: the paragraph above is 92 words….you can do it!

Contest Deadline:
Saturday, August 29, 2020

Your entry (via post on Instagram or Twitter or via email) must be visible or received by 12 midnight (MDT).

Finalists will be announced September 1st. We will announce the winner by September 7th.

Sue William Silverman will help us select the winner.

Please submit your own image and/or properly credit the photographer.

By entering the contest you agree to let us publish your entry online, you will retain all rights to your words and image (as appropriate). You will be credited as you like.

Our What’s Your Metaphor? announcement is using a photo by William Krause on Unsplash. If you are looking for an image, Unsplash is a great source of free to use images, so please do be sure to credit the photographers.

Also, your support helps us continue our work to celebrate and encourage women and non-binary writers. Share our posts on instagram, tell writer friends about our podcast, and even introduce us to writers you think should be featured. You also can help us financially (and get some fun perks!) by signing up on Patreon.