Not the first time I’ve spun a story from my focus on one word and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Woke up this morning thinking too many things at once, which produced a few false starts. So I closed my eyes and said, “Silence, that’s what I need.” After a few minutes of a quiet mind I typed the word silence into my Word file. And the shorty was born. Almost more of a prose poem.
Working Title: Silence
1st Sentence: It’s been a long time coming, this silence.
Favorite Sentence: You had to fight for your share of enough—enough breakfast, enough mattress, enough water for a bath, enough room to speak, enough mother, enough father.
Word Length: 238
The photo above, taken in Perugia by Flickr user Ale 8/2005, was labeled “Silence,” and I agree the word is apt to describe this lovely, peaceful space.
This story was born because I woke up thinking about the words wholly, holy, and holey (hole-y), which got me thinking about how holiness is generally considered a plus but holeyness (hole-i-ness) not so much (although for some things, like Swiss cheese and colanders, a good thing). As for the shorty, still dark stuff but at least there’s a little word play in this one and I think this shorty might turn out to be a keeper.
It seems the fatigue is producing some pretty dark stuff and not with the usual relief of humor. I read the day’s shorty again just now and winced. Moving on to the next and hoping for light.
I’m writing and back-dating story posts now, and when I consult my notes to see what I was thinking when I wrote each day’s shorty, I mostly see “I’m tired.” Today’s shorty might or might not come good when I have a chance to go back to it, but anyway I’m grateful for it because my favorite sentence gives me an excuse to post a photo of potato chips. Mmmmm.
If I’m ever feeling full of myself for writing a story every day for so many months, I need only remind myself of Samuel Pepys to prevent ego-bloat. The man wrote a diary entry every single day for 10 years, from January 1, 1660, until the end of 1669. Now THAT is a commitment! I’ve been alternating story-prompt weeks with non-story-prompt weeks, and it’s time for prompts again. In brainstorming possible prompts, I thought of old Sam’s diary, which I’d always heard was pretty lively. Turns out, a man named 
Several starts got me nowhere and my mind felt blank, so I went looking for something interesting in stories that are unfinished or finished but bad. I stumbled over a paragraph that I’d tacked onto the end of a poor story I’ve never been able to rescue in the four or five years of occasionally playing with it. That (now re-worked) paragraph sparked the day’s shorty.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a shorty for sheer amusement. Feels good!
Ahh, back to that long, over-ambitious, unfinish-able story that partly launched this challenge. Not long after getting my MFA, I started on a linked collection of stories set here in Maine (I’m a transplant from NC). I poured my heart into it and I have written, oh, 60 or 70 pages of material for the “launch” story and other characters and situations I want to develop. But almost three years later I still hadn’t completed that first story and couldn’t find my way out of it. Nor could I finish any other story-in-progress, which is mostly why I committed to writing a story every day in May, yada yada. The day’s shorty is a re-worked excerpt from that unfinished story. I have no idea why, in the middle of working on a lackluster something-else, I remembered this chunk and was inspired to make a shorty of it, but there you go.
I tend not to provide much setting in my stories. My characters could be any sort of people, located Anywhere, USA. So one of the things always lurking in the back of my creative brain is the desire to incorporate local landscape and culture into my writing more. In one small effort, today’s shorty grew from a description of the river that bordered the back of our property growing up. That bit has been in my idea file for a while, so it needed its own space.
Over the years taking various kinds of writing workshops and classes, I’ve found that when teachers offer writing prompts, the prompts often contain an image or phrase that is particularly clever or strange or otherwise arresting. I find that this sort of prompt is unhelpful because it claims so much energy for itself and the point of the subsequent writing winds up being about trying to make sense of the prompt rather than really letting story take hold and carry the writing someplace new and interesting. An ordinary sentence can make a better prompt because it allows more space for invention. Today’s shorty was inspired by this simple prompt that came to me while searching for an idea: She should have left him when X.
The sound prompt for the day was boiling water, selected by the husband from 
I’m writing this on December 18 but per usual, I’m back-dating to match the day I wrote the story I’m documenting in this post. First a word on this ongoing story-a-day challenge: This last week has been the hardest full week so far. I absolutely could not do anything more on this project than just get each day’s story written, and many days that was a close-run thing. But I did it. And I’m building a little energy again for documenting the process. The shorty for December 11 was inspired by the sound of a cricket chirping, which my husband selected from the site 
With this pretty platter of peanut brittle, one of my favorite treats, we celebrate another week of the Daily Shorty challenge. Mmmm. As for the day’s shorty, I can’t say much for it except that it kept itself nicely short. I seem to be going shorter all the time, which I find really interesting.
I toss story-starts all the time, but if a start to a piece actually takes hold—I see the shape of the whole story, I know how to sweep to its end, the story has, in a way, taken on its own life—then I finish it as the day’s shorty, and if I still don’t like it, I just walk away knowing that one will never be on my submissions list. But before I walk away I craft, and re-craft, and craft again, rendering my crummy story as carefully as I can. It’s a strange feeling, tweaking something I don’t like, but I believe in making anything I write as good as it can be, even if it will never see the light of day.
Love this world-weary depiction of Santa (credit below). We’ve been decorating the apartment and otherwise getting ready for Christmas, which we always celebrate quietly but with great love and enthusiasm. So Santa is on my mind.
Yesterday when I went to the gym I saw a lovely bird hopping around the twiggy branches of a denuded tree right outside the main door. I am terrible about identifying birds, so I have no idea what it was, but it looked nothing like the bird pictured here (photo credit below), I just love this picture so much I had to post it. The bird I saw had plenty of soft blue and its head was striped with a really vivid yellow. He looked skittery to me (and yes, like a “he”) so I spoke to him in a whisper and then went on my way. I suppose it was that bird that inspired today’s shorty, which is delightfully short.
Today’s inspirational postcard has a picture of Bates College’s Hathorn Hall (photo credit below). My husband works at Bates and we live within easy walking distance, so I’m on campus all the time. Hathorn is one of my favorite buildings. It just screams New England.
I really like the idea for this one but the execution… not so much. Hopefully I’ll work some magic in revision. As for my inspiration, I honestly have no clue how a postcard with the O’Keeffe painting pictured here (see photo credit below) led me to the story I wrote, which appears to have absolutely no connection to the painting. But after a meditation on the image and some note-taking, well, I wrote a story, and that’s that.
I buy pretty postcards wherever I go just so they can sit on a shelf. Today I gathered a pile and went through them, selecting the most intriguing as I went. I kept whittling the pile until I had seven to use for story prompts this week. The first, chosen randomly from the seven, was imprinted with the photo you see here of an Edward Steichen painting (see photo credit below). Isn’t it stunning? It took most of the day for me to get a story out of this image because I was so enchanted with it all I could think of were more colors and shapes. Gorgeous.
People keep asking me if I bring back characters created for these shorties and I keep saying no while thinking that I should. Today I thought about previous stories with that idea in mind and one character came to me immediately, Yessiree Bob from the story of the same name written on 
So, writer friends, you know how people tell you these outrageous things about their family members and every time you hear one of these stories you get a half-thought that truly you’re going to have to use that batshit-crazy tidbit in a story someday and so you just keep it tucked away, waiting…? The day’s shorty was inspired by one of those tidbits.
This morning’s fragrance was… Worcestershire sauce. Nothing smells quite like it, yes? A big whiff of it made me think of my mother preparing the kind of food you take to a party—dips, sauces. Which in turn made me think of deviled eggs. Which in turn made me think of family reunions.
Having a really tough week because I’ve got other commitments that are taking a lot of time. I pulled this one out, inspired by the fragrance of a burning match, but only just. I think I’ve got something that could come good in revision, so okay. Onward!
At the gym, today, I sat on a mat and thought about all the grieving mothers and fathers. Later I wrote a story based on the notes I took.
With all the election excitement, I clean forgot to celebrate my completion of another week of the Daily Shorty challenge yesterday. Doesn’t this cocoa look wonderful? Let’s drink a fond farewell to Week 27! And hello, week 28. Not starting the week with a barn burner, but… glad to be starting the week.
The husband handed me a piece of a geode this morning (it looks almost exactly like this picture I pulled from the Web), the texture (and inevitably the look) of which inspired one aspect of the protagonist of this gleefully short story. Yesterday the look of my “texture prompt” definitely inspired the story more than the feel of it. Maybe I should do my best to lock onto my story idea while holding my texture prompt with eyes closed, so that it’s more likely I’ll focus on the sense of touch in the inspired story? Or maybe I should just be glad every time I get an idea that develops into a story and not give into the temptation to grade my process. Yeah, that.
And a fond farewell to Week 26! One of my all-time favorite treats is pistachio ice cream—enjoy it with me as I celebrate another completed week of the Daily Shorty challenge. The last inspiration I pulled from my mystery box was part of the top of a corroded aerosol can, which got me fixated on the thought of hairspray. I covered three pages with various ideas and story starts related to hairspray—I couldn’t shake the image of it—and finally landed on a story as list using that number again: 7. Many thanks, again, to Jen Hicks. I love saying this: I owe you one!
It took this Daily Shorty project to teach me what a joy it can be to write in a parking lot. There’s something so… in between about that space, so not-place about it—it nicely empties your mind of whatever’s bugging you so story ideas can rush in. Now when I find myself in a parking lot, I see my time there as “found time” in the same way that I consider that five dollar bill I just pulled from the pocket of a jacket “found money.” I wrote today’s shorty in the lot of the local Hannaford while the husband, grateful to be free of my label-reading attention, restocked our pantry and fridge. My mystery box inspiration today was a black and white photo of a man in work clothes at a table covered in tools. Looks like he’s in a large space—a factory? And the photo looks period. Maybe the 1930s, 1940s? The tools inspired my story, so here I’ve put up a picture of a toolbox. One more day of the mystery box!
My week is going faster than usual, even, because I’m doing so much editing. Hoping for a much lighter November. I hand-wrote today’s shorty, which is something I haven’t done in a while. I highly recommend going back and forth between hand-writing and composing on the keyboard. There’s something so sensual about running a pen across the page—I think I access my writing brain a little differently. The photo shows today’s inspiration—a little notion that looks like a button (but isn’t) resting on the paper I used to write the story. The notion is embossed with the figure of a… moth… butterfly… dragonfly? I saw a dragonfly at first, so that’s what inspired my story. Now I’m not so sure, but the story, in any case, is a wrap.
Daily Shorty 
