Actually, I’m being unfair, maybe. After writing two stories in a row that I found both funny and painful (my favorite combination!) I wrote one today that’s really just a joke. But it amuses me and I had fun writing it, so why am I complaining? As I keep reminding a friend who is thinking about taking the Daily Shorty Challenge for a month: I don’t write because I must write well. I write because I must write. If I let my Inner Critic have her way and try to demand—every single day—a draft that will ultimately be something I’m proud to submit, then I have lost the game entirely.
Working Title: Would You Rather Be Hitler or Stalin?
1st Sentence: If you had to kill someone—in self-defense, of course—would you rather deliver one sharp blow to the temple with a blunt object or pierce the heart with one easy jab of a very sharp knife?
Favorite Sentence: Jake from Michigan wants to know if blood would spurt from the wound when you stabbed the person, or would the cut be clean?
Word Length: 314
Photo of knife by Donovan Govan, April 2005; of bat by Jthoele2, October 2009.
Daily Shorty 
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