And good riddance. January was brutal and February was worse, both because we had to euthanize our beautiful kitty—I’ve put up another of my favorite pictures of her, here—and because for the entire month I fought a kind of fatigue that just totally took over my mind. I used to be able to bounce back for weeks at a time. Now a good bounce lasts maybe a day. Well, I wanted to know what would happen to me if I wrote a story every day for a year, and now I’m finding out. The day’s shorty is a sad one about a grieving widow. Fitting.
Working Title: The Empty Half
1st Sentence: Without him I can’t speak, not coherently.
Favorite Sentence: Half of everything I want to say went ashes to ashes and now when I open my mouth to let words drop I find that I am part cluttered noise, part yawning empty, all confused garble.
Word Length: 334
My husband took this photo of our sweetie not too long ago.
I write a lot about people who seem to be losing it. Recently a friend recommended that I not submit a story about a patient in a mental institution to a contest because she thinks editors are leary of stories “about the disturbed.” My experience in publishing says she’s probably right about that, yet pretty often my characters mentally deconstruct on the page. What’s a girl to do? Anyway, I like this one. It’ll be fun to come back to it and better shape it, fill in the gaps.
This process continues to amaze me. Toward the end of a totally brutal month (I’m writing this catch-up post in March), I write a joke-story that makes me laugh. Thank goodness for the muse’s sense of humor.
Easy ones are increasingly rare so I’m grateful for this shorty that wrote itself, a strange piece about a poet that came from who knows where. And I’m so happy to officially mark another week! I’m celebrating with my memory of the fabulous burgers I ate at 
When I catch up on story posts—I’m writing this one about 3 weeks later—I use notes describing the writing session that I leave in the Word file created for the shorty. This file had no notes and I had no memory of the piece even as I read it just now. It’s refreshing, though, because it’s really strange and total fiction, unlike so many autobiographical pieces I wrote in February. The ending is a speed-written plunge with gaps (it’s obvious I was nodding off as I wrote it) and the ending scenario is very likely to change, but at least this one is well worth coming back to.
When I’m severely stuck, which is a state I’m living in far too often these days, I follow the advice to look for my material in my obsessions, gripes, fears. A huge gripe is the condescending things some mothers say to me when they discover I chose not to have children.
More and more, as I crawl through this challenge, childhood memory provides. This turned out to be a cnf piece about my mother’s strange predilection for noting the proper titles and occupations of anyone in the public eye.
This shorty is based on a taste memory I’ve been chasing, and it’s a great example of a piece that is very well done for what it is, but there’s kind of no there there. If I were more of a poet perhaps I could write a compelling shorty based only on taste. Next time!
There are bad shorties and then there are shorties that revel in their badness, mocking me with a smoker’s choked laughter, inviting me to question this project, my calling. Go ahead and laugh. No one else will ever hear you. Laugh while I move on to the next.
One of the ways I rescue a totally arid brain is to go back to childhood. This story about my mother using gasoline to light our wood stove fits nicely into a small package. Oh, the horror on my father’s face when he discovered she’d been doing that—maybe I’ll write that story sometime.
Well, I ended the week on a high note. I’m not sure this story is in its final form but it’s got a lot of energy and promise and it’s one I’ll enjoy coming back to. To mark the accomplishment of finishing Week 42, a piece of banana coconut cream pie with a cashew graham crust and chocolate and caramel sauce.
All the notes I took for this week of stories said things like “I’m tired” and “Still sad about [my cat] Maria” and “Not in the flow.” So it’s not surprising that this is the first story this week that feels right and whole.
Sometimes when I’m fishing for story I hook a word that I don’t want to let go. The word I caught for this shorty was “figment.” I developed a really strong beginning from that word but then totally fizzled on the ending. Hopefully I can pick up the thread in revision and do a much better job.
My husband’s family likes to tease his younger brother about his greatest fear when he was a child, which was that a meteor might fall on him. I wonder if he felt vindicated when he heard about the meteor that fell in Russia and saw the amazing video. My shorty doesn’t measure up yet but it might in revision.
When I was a kid, one of every year’s major concerns was whether my father would please my mother with an appropriate gesture on Valentine’s Day. We kids teetered on the line between dread and excitement as we waited for Dad to come home and prove himself to be worthy or unworthy. It was always a close-run thing. I didn’t quite get it right in this shorty but it’s a strong start.
Occasionally I see a pretty tattoo and I think, “Why not?” You only live once. But then I think… PERMANENT. And that word is enough to scare me away. Just further proof that I was born with the sensibility of a middle-aged woman in mom-jeans. Anyway, thinking about tattoos today led to a piece that isn’t great but has potential when I can come back to it.
Really struggled and it shows. This one will live on the hard drive.
This hot chocolate looks so comforting. It’s the right virtual treat to enjoy as gratitude for completing the very, very difficult Week 41. As for the day’s shorty (I’m typing this post on February 21), I had no heart for writing the day after saying goodbye to our kitty. Late that night, when I couldn’t make anything in my idea file work, I looked through my file of unfinished stories and found a start to something I wrote more than four years ago. My “I really wish I didn’t have to think about this” approach helped me to zero in on why I never wrote more than a few paragraphs after a whole page of notes on what I wanted to accomplish: The story’s vision was far too complicated. I saw how to render a simplified version in much shorter form and pounded it out. It’s a joke-story in any case, probably destined to live on my hard drive. But it’s nice to check off another piece that had been languishing in my “unfinished” folder. And it was good to work on something meant to be humorous.
Had to say goodbye to my sweet girl this morning. Just a couple of months ago she was making a mess of the index cards I was using to help me organize a chapbook. She loved nothing more than to interfere whenever I or my husband was focused on a task. We miss her so desperately already. As for my daily shorties, I have kept up with them, barely. But right now I have no heart for anything else. I will catch up on story posts when I’m better.
Among the many, many lessons this challenge is teaching me so well: The idea file or writer’s notebook is an awfully good friend. I had to end this shorty badly, though, for lack of time to find the right ending.
Again, a whole day of effort, but I got there. And the story is pretty good, maybe a keeper. The idea file is really coming in handy these days.
I like it when I can figure out how to build on the scraps I save in my idea file. Struggled the whole day then finally made something work. Not a keeper in present form but it has potential for when I come back to it.
I was so directed yesterday, using contest guidelines to frame my composition. Today I didn’t count the number of starts I threw out. In the end I grabbed a paragraph from my idea file as a start and forced myself to build a narrative sentence-by-sentence. And an odd, creepy little narrative it is.
Big congrats to me for finishing Week 40! We’ve got a huge snowstorm going here in Maine and I’m craving comfort food, so my virtual celebration treat is savory. That’s the kind of plate I could swim in for a long time…. As for the day’s work, do you know about 
My friend 
This one didn’t come easy but it finally landed. A strange one with some potential when I go back for revision. Inspired by February 3rd’s poem at 
Oh thank goodness. I can’t remember the last time I got a gift shorty. I did have to spend some time thinking about the prompt poem I got from 
Today’s prompt poem from 
Daily Shorty 
