And this completes week 52. GULP. Enjoy these rice pudding fritters with orange-honey sauce to celebrate! I have never heard of such but they look and sound DELICIOUS. As for the day’s work, I went meta again. I like the approach, the shape, the kind of ending I chose. But the story doesn’t have depth and that’s mostly the fault of an ending that doesn’t suit. It’s the right kind of ending but composed of the wrong words. Maybe I can make it better in revision. Anyway, it’s done, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I have only ONE MORE to write! Until tomorrow….
Working Title: Smokey
1st Sentence: When Smokey the Bear came to our third-grade classroom to teach us about fire safety, Jenny Hite leapt from her chair, shrieked “Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod,” and then burst into tears while flailing her balled fists and running in place.
Favorite Sentence: Oh, the full, satisfying mouthfeel of drama and despair.
Word Length: 563
Photo by Recipetaster 5/2011.
I lost count of how many times I started the day’s shorty. I just couldn’t find my way into anything until I remembered a character I created last month, I think—a sock puppet named Lemonade. So this is what you do at the tail end of a year-long commitment that has mostly eaten your brain: You write stories about sock puppets. Because it’s the only thing that makes you laugh. Lemonade, I thank you.
It’s quite a treat at this point when I have fun with a story. As I’ve already moaned about too much, April has been a pretty sad-sack month, all about gritting my teeth and keeping my head down. The day’s shorty took many tries and then once something stuck I had to work well into the night (morning) to complete it, but, dammit, it was fun to write! I see that it needs more meat on its bones but that just means more fun when I come back to it. Onward!
After a number of frustrated tries at story that didn’t take, I started chatting with my all-purpose main character, the one I pull like taffy into whatever personality suits the day’s shorty, and it turns out she’s as tired as I am (today she’s a she). More so, maybe. She asks that she be allowed to live on the margins for a while, pop up only once or twice in a piece, to deliver a crucial piece of information or highlight a flaw in someone else for a change. That is, of course, impossible, but I avoided saying so and let her vent.
In a recent post I mentioned that sometimes I look at my husband Pat and ask him what my story should be about and he tosses out some silly word or phrase that I sometimes use as my launching pad (or as a short writing exercise I then delete, mind warmed up, and head for story). I was at the office my friend Patty and I rent when I started the day’s shorty using the same trick. Patty, give me a word. She happened to be writing at the time and said she had just typed the word “overburdened.” Okay, then. Thanks Patty!
Love the idea for this story, which I woke up with and then thought about all day. I’ll describe it as a guardian angel tale gone awry. But the execution is sloppy and rushed, with some gaps I’ll need to fill when I come back. Still, I’m happy to see something fresh from my fevered mind. I had completely forgotten it, of course (I’m writing this story post 5 days later). Well, it’s good to leave something I’ll need to chew hard for later.
Sometimes before a writing session I turn to my husband Pat and say, “Okay, tell me what today’s story is going to be about.” He says something silly like “Monkeys on the moon!” and I laugh and then find inspiration another way. Occasionally whatever he spits out does actually inspire the story I write, as in this case. He said, “The mighty fork!”
My friend Gwen Mullins took the Daily Shorty Challenge with me last summer. She sent me this story prompt: “Gaudi’s most famous church, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, has been under construction for a hundred years. In some photos of the church, the cranes and scaffolding are digitally removed.” I’ll just say right now that I didn’t do this prompt justice, maybe because I was too charmed by it. In any case, the shorty I began to write reminded me of an old story I had begun several years ago, so I went back to that material and used several sentences from it as my foundation. I don’t think it works yet—probably needs to be longer, maybe much longer. But it’s a nice start. Many thanks to Gwen!
A very nice man named Paul has twice e-mailed me during this journey to encourage me to stay on the path. He’s suggested some story ideas, too, which inspired me to do a week of prompts from friends. I used one of Paul’s ideas for the day’s shorty. Six writer friends have done a Daily Shorty week with me, so for the rest of this week I’ll use prompts offered by each of them. For this shorty, I chose Paul’s suggestion to incorporate some notion of time travel into a story. I played on the idea by having a woman open a trunk her 20-year-old self had packed for her own 60th birthday. I was intrigued by the potential clash of what we consider important at 20 versus 60. I don’t think I did enough with this first draft, but maybe I can make something good of it in revision. Many thanks to Paul!
So here’s the thing about writing a story every day for 329 days. On the 330th day, you ask yourself: What have I not done yet? A gazillion things, of course, but the brain that has written a story every day for 329 days doesn’t FEEL like there are a gazillion ideas and approaches out there. That brain says, are you shitting me? But then Rude Brain does actually think of something she hasn’t done yet. With the help of a prompt, of course. This week (my DS weeks begin on Tuesdays), I’ve decided to focus on a different sense each day, adding the “sixth sense” for fun, and re-doing one of the senses for the seventh day. I drew randomly to determine the order and today I had to focus on sound. So I wrote a story that was framed around a “sound” word. That made me want to blend text, so I found a way to mix in quotes from a Shakespeare play. I don’t think the resultant shorty-stew works so well but it was fun to just be a goof.
I think I said recently that again and again I’ve gone to the childhood well to save myself in times of extreme desperation? Sometimes that works out and I write something I really like. Most of the time it goes the way it went today. That’s two stories in a row destined to live only on my hard drive.
Sometimes if I spin out from one simple sentence, I can make something I really enjoy. Other times… I just keep spinning.
In Maine we’re getting our usual heavy doses of March snow when my bones are used to daffodils, so I’m posting a photo here to combat the chill. As for my shorties, I continue to have trouble, most days, coming up with an idea that will hold. Over and over I wind up settling into a story around midnight and then staying up another hour or two to complete it. This one, framed as a list of the most important facts of a person’s life, was fun, despite my falling asleep over it. I’ll enjoy coming back to it.
Well, I’ve started Week 47 with a bang. Or something. This story is… frantic, feverish, and not a little silly. It makes me laugh but also puzzles me. This is not my best work—I think it could use a bit more depth and punch. But I can’t think of another time when I’ve written something that both tickles and pokes me this much. If it takes, what, 323 straight days of writing a story every new day to accomplish that, then I’ll just go ahead and declare this whole challenge a success, even if I wind up not making it to the end. So a bouquet of flowers goes to me for this version of success. But I do really want to make it to the end….
It took a long time for this one to arrive but once it did, it wrote itself. So, another gift in a tough week. I can’t tell how good this shorty is but I like it because I played with allusions to the old fairy tales about trolls guarding bridges. Inspired, of course, by the 
I remember loving the idea for this shorty about a man who for no reason starts hearing the thoughts of people who are speaking to him. A bad movie cliché, I know, but I like the way I’d envisioned the story unfolding. But the execution is terrible, and not just because I had to leave some gaps. Maybe I’ll come back to it, maybe I won’t.
January was brutal, February was worse, and March is hardest yet (I’m writing this catch-up post 3/19). The wall is coming. This first March shorty will enjoy a long life on my hard drive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 
That’s more like it. Another shorty that doesn’t sing but it’s got potential, it’s about something real. After days of lackluster word-pushing, that’s what I need right now, a few pieces that remind me of why I write. Today’s piece was inspired by 
And… um… good riddance. Thanks to my flu, definitely the worst week of the challenge. I wrote today’s shorty as a meditation on place that I hoped would help with another, long, unfinished story I’ve been revisiting. It helped in that now I know the longer story doesn’t need it. As for the photo, now that I’m recovering an appetite, I’m craving every food I’ve ever eaten and enjoyed, including junk food. For some reason today I am plagued by thoughts of Skittles.
Daily Shorty 
