“Claire does not write realist fiction.” That appeared in one of my student evaluations when I got my MFA. I had a weirdly defensive reaction at the time—I think I read “true” or maybe just “real” rather than realist. When I met with my mentor I asked him what he meant by that and he looked at me, perplexed, and said, “Well, Claire, I meant… that you don’t write realist fiction…?” And of course I almost never do. Until now! For some reason—well, likely because I’ve been working on a very long, realist story for a couple of years, now—the shorties I’ve been cranking out are pretty earthbound. But today I got a nicely strange one.
Working Title: Glimpse
1st Sentence: It’s not true that I can see the future.
Favorite Sentence: The feel of the pages on her fingertips, the tickle of book dust in her nose, these good words, these pretty sentences spooling through her fingers, the bottomless promise of unmarked time, like a red carpet rolled out before her and disappearing into the distance.
Word Length: 830
Daily Shorty 
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