Daily Shorty

I left Thursday morning to pick up a friend from the airport so we could head to gorgeous Ogunquit, Maine, for a retreat. So I should have had all the time in the world for my shorties, right? Sadly (and wonderfully)… no. The purpose of the trip was to tackle and subdue a project we have been talking about for some time. We were wildly successful, which should tell you how much time I had to devote to my shorties. The view in the photo here is where my gaze mostly fell in my morning Daily Shorty writing sessions. Fortunately for all, I didn’t take a photo of anything related to my late-night writing sessions, when I hunched into a stack of pillows on the bed, stared at the computer screen, pulled hard at the threads I’d spun that morning…. But here we are, last night of the retreat and another shorty in the bag.

Working Title: Menu Bingo
1st Sentence: “The first day is always really tough,” she said, then popped her gum.
Favorite Sentence: Parents who encouraged the endless I-wants of their picky brats but who couldn’t be bothered to leave a tip; women who tell you to hold the mayo, ask if you have soy cheese, order extra avocado on the side; and the coffee hounds with bladders the size of basketballs and the patience of Henry the VIII^th I am.
Word Length: 779

Photo of Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, Maine, July 2012.

Broke the oft-cited rule to “write what you know.” Better rule: Don’t dismiss what you know. Even better rule: Break rules.

Working Title: Hooligans
1st Sentence: The twins hovered at the lake edge, their hands scrabbling in the grass.
Favorite Sentence: The little fingers opened and in her lap landed a pulpy frog, a tiny thing, its breath pushed from the broken belly by an oblivious Terrible Two.
Word Length: 924

I love it when I can answer a frustrating, pulling-teeth day with a purely joyful writing session the next day. It’s like following a bogey with a birdie without all that walking around in cleats and Johnny Miller analyzing every yip, every tremble. He’s a pro, Johnny, he knows why he missed the putt. Today a gift from the writing gods. Not at all sure about the ending but that’s a concern for revision. Until tomorrow!

Working Title: Old Polish Saying
1st Sentence: At least your foot’s not a banana.
Favorite Sentence: Now he stares at his lovely wife, his ripe, sexy wife, with her pouty mouth and nervous energy, she of the delicate hands—hands so light they could be made of lace, hands so soft they whispered, hands like white butterflies, fingers like whiskers, like fine threads—and the incongruous, barrel-chested, cigarette-cured, stevedore laugh.
Word Length: 583

Photo here.

Check out the word length on this one! I had a lot of fun with this shorty.

Working Title: The Trade-Off
1st Sentence: A few weeks after we married, he asked me to stop leaving my shoes in the middle of the floor.
Favorite Sentence: “Clearly,” I said, one night, in the clutch of desire to save this relationship, “Clearly we have forgotten the power of The Trade-Off.”
Word Length: 666

Photo: I bought these awesome shoes at the Goodwill for 8 bucks!

With all the excitement of getting the husband home from the airport and going out to dinner to celebrate his big promotion I… unbelievably… FORGOT that this is the last day of my SECOND month! A gorgeous banana split for me! My shorty today was quiet, a bit strange, and, yet again, one that I figured out with each new line. Maybe writing a story every day for this long mandates this new kind of process? Time will tell. Check out my Story Facts + page for a geeky take on the month of June.

Working Title: The I-Love-My-Kid Side
1st Sentence: 3:12 AM.
Favorite Sentence: Again she’s struck by how garish it is, mostly due to the glitter mixed into it but also because the shade of pink makes her think of cheap prom dresses, junk candy, Barbie shoes.
Word Length: 880

Photo by Newsum, July 2006.

I love fine chocolates (far more than I like the truffles that have been so hot at chocolate shops for what, at least a decade, now—people, do you have any idea how easy it is to make a scrumptious truffle at home?) But as I told my husband many years ago, proving once again that I have always been a cheap date, a dark Milky Way—I believe they’re calling it a “Midnight Dark” Milky Way these days—pleases me every bit as much as the finest chocolate I have ever tasted and I have tasted more than my share. So for this week I reward myself with a virtual “Midnight Dark.”

Working Title: What She Should Have Said
1st Sentence: This is what she thinks she should have said: “Take your fat paycheck and ram it, and take your sweet convertible and your season’s tickets and your front table at Marroque’s and your black and chrome espresso machine and ram those, too, because I am not your plaything, I am not your afternoon booty call, I am NOT an accessory, GET OUT!”
Favorite Sentence: I can’t wait to play his latest game, Bitch Hunter.
Word Length: 586

Photo by Evan-Amos, April 2011.

Working Title: Your Pretty Lies
1st Sentence: You were not kidnapped by a crazy neighbor lady while your mother was at work.
Favorite Sentence: Your mother did not slice open your small, thin-ribbed chest, scoop out your heart, and leave it, shivering, on a cold, metal table, slick with blood and starved of oxygen.
Word Length: 876

Photo by Frank Vincentz April 2011.

This gorgeous little tart is my virtual treat for completing SIX WEEKS of the Daily Shorty Challenge! I wrote for almost six hours straight, today, both working on today’s shorty and revising those from previous days. My story today wasn’t inspiring but I wanted to see how hard I could push a mediocre piece with the hope of finding myself on new ground. It never really happened with this one but maybe when I go back to revise?

Working Title: Believing in Abundance
1st Sentence: She has promised herself that she will not finish this glass of wine.
Favorite Sentence: Since when did “enough” become so threadbare, so uninteresting, since when was “enough” a sign of failure?
Word Length: 845

Photo by Flickr user Jessica Spengler April 2006.

Really happy with what I’m calling my June Story-Jam so far. A couple of stinkers in the beginning that nevertheless served an important purpose because I was trying new things in them. Now on the seventh day of June I see that I’ve written already four or five shorties so far this month that may be strong stories when I revise them. And yesterday and today I was more intentional than usual about process and my own daily and writing rhythms. Will that continue?

Working Title: Did Cleopatra Wear Her Hair Up?
1st Sentence: We saw a show about Cleopatra.
Favorite Sentence: I told her about the woman at the pharmacy who couldn’t shut up about her new dog, then I rattled off all the details I knew she’d want—“a poodle but she’s not going to do that stupid cut, gray, girl, shy of other dogs, really affectionate, Mimsy, Purina Puppy Chow with a little bologna for a treat.”
Word Length: 713

Photo by Eslam17.

Working Title: Why You Came Back as a Cat
1st Sentence: Jennifer says you came back as a cat because you always had to have your own way, and there is no living thing more insistent on imposing its will than the modern house cat.
Favorite Sentence: Yeah, it’s so very satisfying to know that I picked my skirt just right—long enough, well-made enough to say “successful professional”; short enough, fitted enough to say, “And a very happy day to you, Bucky-boy.”
Word Length: 608

Photo: Another excuse to show off my beautiful Maria!

A virtual box of chocolates to celebrate writing a daily shorty the entire month of May! Yeehaw! See May’s Story Facts + page for a geeky round-up of the month and some reflection on how the month went. I’ll say here that drafting a shorty every day for a month was shockingly easy. I looked forward to my writing session every day, I was constantly looking for time to revise stories I’d written in previous days, and the number of total clunkers is very low: 4, so an average of 1 per week. Which is not to say that the other 27 stories will all turn out to be submittable. Many of the stories escaped the label “clunker” because I tried something new and fun or because one element of the story really pleased me. I think 15 to 20 are well worth revising and at least 10 feel like they will become strong pieces I will be proud to submit. At least 3 are ready for submission now. These happy numbers FAR exceed my wildest expectations for May. Full steam ahead!

Working Title: Flower Diaries
1st Sentence: Buttercups.
Favorite Sentence: Her mother was furious that her teacher had allowed a damned Hare Krishna to cheat her daughter of lunch and a memento of the trip, so mad she’d practically slapped the flowers from her hands.
Word Length: 719

Photo by Hans Lindqvist 12/2008

Working Title: His Laugh
1st Sentence: She rejected Anton because he had too much nose, Richard because he could never remember what personal stories he had told her and which he had not, Ellis because he wore sneakers with khakis.
Favorite Sentence: Week after week slid by and there was Thomas, hanging around Marsha’s elbow—was he shrinking?—double-dipping the crudités, gnawing at a chicken wing like a starved jackal for Christ’s sake.
Word Length: 681

A yellow hangover from yesterday. I pushed hard to get something that would please me a little. So not a total clunker but it would take a strong revision to turn this one into a keeper.

Working Title: Michelle-O the Yellow Who Plays the Cello
1st Sentence: They are gathered in the girls’ bathroom.
Favorite Sentence: The day she showed up at PhysEd wearing the doctored shorts and tee—now muddy brown with orange splotches wherever there had been yellow—the kids stared at first, then of course understood exactly why Michelle-O had messed with the clothes.
Word Length: 769

This marks the first Daily Shorty inspired by a memory. I’m certain it won’t be the last.

Working Title: Her First Job
1st Sentence: Her first job was at a fancy restaurant with Michelin stars dribbling from its pewter pitchers, swimming at the bottom of its champagne glasses.
Favorite Sentence: Anyway it’s impossible to put someone in his place when your uniform makes you look like a French maid.
Word Length: 594

Photo by flickr user alan.light 1989.

“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

Hockey figured prominently in May 3’s “Love with a Limp.” And now football. Not even a full two weeks of stories yet and already two sports (that I have never played and barely watch).

Working Title: Football Jenny
1st Sentence: In her hair she wears football barrettes.
Favorite Sentence: So she can watch Rayvon Gardner run his tight ass into the end zone and spike the football, do a dance for Jesus, pay another fine for God?
Word Length: 650

Photo by Torsten Bolten, March 2007.

Working Title: Middle Child
1st Sentence: Of course Sissy brought sweet potatoes.
Favorite Sentence: His fork stopped on the way to his plate—piled high with a second helping of those damn sweet potatoes—and I thought go ahead, you fat bastard, eat another marshmallow, see if I don’t divorce your pig-ass just for that.
Word Length: 840

Picture from We Have Internets!

Latté Foam Art

Working Title: Love with a Limp
1st Sentence: At a table too small to hold them, a man and a woman are arguing about flying pie pans.
Favorite Sentence: Fuck Foam.
Word Length: 742

Photo by Takeaway, Latté art at Doppio Ristretto in Chiang Mai 2011.