Archive | Daily Shorty Year post RSS feed for this section

And now for a keeper!

9 Jun

Working Title: Made You Miss
1st Sentence: When they’d played tennis he couldn’t get it through his thick head that the point—the whole reason they were out there in the first place—was to get a good workout.
Favorite Sentence: The tennis ball bounced lightly to her right, slow and high, hanging in the air like a neon green face begging to be slapped.
Word Length: 1,674
Photo by nao2g June 2008.

I’ll call this another prose poem….

8 Jun

Working Title: She Cried
1st Sentence: She cried before the first line was out because when he sang his voice was not the voice she knew, brash and elastic, making chords out of truth and confusion and anger.
Favorite Sentence: She cried because he opened with his famous anti-war song and when he was done he shook his head and said he’d felt dumb for writing that song, because, he’d believed then, it was a song that wouldn’t hold up, that powerful men punching you in the face with the American flag would be an embarrassing memory in another decade, that he would have to explain how stupid people were then, how brutal.
Word Length: 282

A Sad One

7 Jun

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.

Inspired by a Game I Never Play

6 Jun

Pushed hard to make something of the first lines and images that came to me. Getting stubborn about wanting something I like to happen on the page. This is good and bad. Bad if I forget how to let go when I need to, bad if I let the Inner Critic get too loud, again—she was overbearing before I started this project. Good because I should always push.

Working Title: Scrabble Night
1st Sentence: We were falling behind, Jane and I.
Favorite Sentence: The stuff looked like a big, fat urine sample on ice.
Word Length: 1,245

Photo: I will never admit to how long that took.

Kicking off Week 6!

5 Jun

I didn’t reward myself with a virtual treat yesterday for completing Week 5 because I wanted to illustrate that post with a picture of Anne Boleyn. So delayed (virtual) gratification delayed no more: An ice cream cone for putting another week in the bag.

Working Title: To the Skeptics
1st Sentence: This is how I know Madame Talantua is for real: She never once told me what I wanted to hear.
Favorite Sentence: She gasped, kind of, and her eyes popped open to look at me so hard it felt like she was pinning something to my face, and I thought, goddamn, now she’s seeing right into me, like I’ll never be able to see myself, this is the best twenty bucks of my life.
Word Length: 1,246

Photo by ElinorD July 2007.

Inspired by My Reading

4 Jun

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies surely brought this shorty to me today. I highly recommend both novels. On another note, big congrats to me for finishing Week 5!

Working Title: God Save Our Queen
1st Sentence: What if Anne Boleyn knew all along?
Favorite Sentence: When Nurse tries to show her how to fold the kerchief back, like a blanket, so dollie can breathe, Anne shakes her head no, pulls the fabric back over the head, presses it to the doll’s face with a flat palm.
Word Length: 1,039

Photo at Wikimedia Commons here.

Tags: , ,

A Trifle

3 Jun

I particularly enjoyed my writing session today. Wrote a light story purely for fun. I’m trying to think of published stories that are meant to serve as an entertaining, pleasant read, and right now the only ones I can come up with are short-shorts: Paul Theroux’s “Acknowledgments,” Robin Hemley’s “Reply All,” Patricia Marx’s “Audio Tour” and “Pledge Drive,” Tessa Brown’s “In Reference to Your Recent Communications” (all anthologized in one or another of the Sudden Fiction collections edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas).

Working Title: Pratfall
1st Sentence: First he tried to win her with his humor but Meredith doesn’t laugh much, mainly at her own jokes, otherwise mostly at slapstick.
Favorite Sentence: And then thirsty again and then angry again and damned if he didn’t upset her so much she snapped a nail, one of the more important ones, a thumb.
Word Length: 951

Photo from Wikimedia Commons here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Going Meta

2 Jun

It’s been a while since I’ve spoken directly to the reader as author. It was fun and the story has potential possibly with a very strong revision, but I don’t need to repeat that experiment anytime soon.

Working Title: Algebra for Life
1st Sentence: A man runs out of a restaurant.
Favorite Sentence: It’s not a happy accident that I get to perk up my blond highlights.
Word Length: 2,005

Another cat kicks off June!

1 Jun

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!

The Merry Month of May!

31 May

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

From “Oh dear” to Hell Yes!

30 May

Working Title: Everest
1st Sentence: She didn’t want to climb Everest just because it’s there.
Favorite Sentence: You swivel when you are meant to sashay, you Samba when you are meant to Salsa, your Cumbi-ya? Cumbi-no.
Word Length: 1,784

Photo by Pavel Novak.

Oh dear….

29 May

Um… I’ll call it a prose poem. I wish this thankfully short piece a very happy life on my hard drive.

Working Title: Scarlet House
1st Sentence: I live in a scarlet house on the horizon.
Favorite Sentence: They subsisted on duty and the graceful line.
Word Length: 189

Photo by McGoldrick Art & Photography 5/2011

Week 4 in the bag!

28 May

A virtual piece of chocolate cake for finishing Week 4! See May’s Story Facts + page for a geeky round-up of the week. As for fact-free impressions, this has been a particularly good week. Wrote a clunker on the 24th but otherwise this is a nice little crop of stories.

Working Title: Honeysuckle
1st Sentence: Occasionally we have them in Maine, days laden with the scent of honeysuckle, scattered with birdsong, shot through with the low hum of bees.
Favorite Sentence: And when we do I move through it at a Carolina pace, relaxed and hopeful, looking for butterflies, wishing I had a cool slice of watermelon so dark-pink ripe, like kissed lips.
Word Length: 457

Photo by CdnStar

Childhood Memories II

27 May

Working Title: War of the Roses
1st Sentence: First it was about the roses.
Favorite Sentence: Her hair sat on her head like a dull cherry Jello salad, the artificial red a chemical marvel.
Word Length: 1,336

Photo by Stan Shebs 4/2005

More Therapy!

26 May

I think this is the third story of the month in which a therapist figures prominently. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something?

Working Title: Doctor Uncle
1st Sentence: Just before she left the apartment, she had to pull out her wallet, touch her driver’s license, count the small amount of cash she carried, then tuck the wallet back into her purse.
Favorite Sentence: Maybe they could stop and rest a little, now and again, review an intense but irrelevant memory of 4-H camp, say, just for a breather?
Word Length: 1,483

Clunker Time

25 May

Working Title: Nutshelling
1st Sentence: My father’s teeth were so strong he could shell walnuts with them.
Favorite Sentence: My father’s teeth were so strong he could shell walnuts with them. (Yes, same sentence. cg)
Word Length: 293

Photo by J. Dncsn 9/2009

Three Easy Ones in a Row

24 May

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

Happy Birthday Pat!

23 May

As part of my birthday present to you, dear husband, I dispatch today’s shorty in record time. I even made it creepy, just for you.

Working Title: Script
1st Sentence: If the cab doesn’t seem right—something is off with the paint, the design, you’re not sure, but it’s not quite right….
Favorite Sentence: If the man looks everywhere but at you until finally, as you lean into the back, you catch his eye, but he’s not looking at you so much as he is taking you apart at the joints, he’s gauging where to place the tip of the knife so that he can lay the heel of his hand on the butt to push down, down, through the bone, a quick and easy cut, a child could do it….
Word Length: 228

Photo by Puschinka 2009

Launching week 4!

22 May

Smilie The Clown


Working Title: Empty Stage
1st Sentence: There is a name for the fear of clowns.
Favorite Sentence: Fear of white gloves that make your hands look like napkins.
Word Length: 361

Photo by Steve Smilie Norman

Week 3 done! And still more yellow.

21 May

A virtual piece of lemon chess pie for me, to celebrate the completion of week 3! And this pie saves us from another block of yellow. Surely three stories about yellow are enough to cleanse the mental palate?? Again, I pushed really hard to get something I like. But also again—probably not destined for submission, this story. Check out May’s Story Facts + page for a geeky look at the week.

Working Title: Woman on a Bench
1st Sentence: A woman rests on a park bench.
Favorite Sentence: Because she is so young and lovely, because the yellow in her dress is the same melted butter shine reflected in her sunglasses, because that tomato is so summer sweet and about to burst its tight skin, no one, passing by, sees beyond her, the shopping bag.
Word Length: 1,040

Photo by Flckr user Stacy, March 2010

More Yellow

20 May

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

How To Kill a Story: The Big Idea

19 May

When I first started writing short stories, I’d start with a Big Idea. I’d want to write a story about redemption, or painful self-discovery. Then I’d work away at creating the characters and scenes that might get me there. I learned to avoid The Big Idea approach because if I try to work from the abstract to the concrete, I fail every time. Yesterday someone told me that the Fairy Tale Review is taking submissions for their Yellow issue and ever since then all I can think is yellow yellow yellow. No surprise, no good ideas took hold in my writing session today and I wound up having to just push through on a bad one. So another clunker. But even clunkers earn sweat equity, right?

Working Title: Yellow
1st Sentence: Yellow was her color.
Favorite Sentence: Ella felt as though she had lived her entire life trying to meet that expectation of sublime adorable, performing as one-half of a girl-boy twin team from the minute she was born.
Word Length: 465

Another Story with a Therapist

18 May

At the end of my second week, I wondered if there were only clunkers ahead of me. I’ve been rocking along ever since and today feel particularly excited about the work I’m doing. Pushing to complete a story every day has forced my Inner Critic to keep her mouth shut and I don’t miss her one bit. But what’s with the new focus on therapists? On another note, this may be the first story I’ve ever written with a dog in it.

Working Title: Little Ludwig: A Cautionary Tale
1st Sentence: Name a kid Ludwig, and what do you expect?
Favorite Sentence: Maybe he’d even get his own show, on the strength of being the first to teach a dog to play Sweet Home, Alabama on the harmonica, or to say the Pledge of Allegiance with right paw properly laid over heart.
Word Length: 2,218

Photo by Anna Utehina, May 2006

Group Therapy

17 May

Working Title: The Hostile Truth
1st Sentence: The first time Ellen woke up eating, she was ladling cocoa puffs into her mouth.
Favorite Sentence: To say that Sandy’s running commentary enraged her, to say that Ellen would very much like to slap Sandy across that sullen face would be… entirely accurate.
Word Length: 1,259

Photo by Evan-Amos, November 2010.

Memories

16 May

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.

A Strange One

15 May

“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

Week 2 in the bag!

14 May

Virtual chocolate chip cookies to celebrate the end of Week 2! Check out May’s Story Facts + page for a geeky take on the week. I’ll say here that I’m not finishing the week in style. May 12 I wrote a clunker, May 13 a minimally pleasing story I don’t expect to revise into something I would submit, and the same today. Do I have only clunkers and unsubmittables ahead for May?

Working Title: Coat Closet
1st Sentence: So I like to spend a little time in the closet every day.
Favorite Sentence: Then Rachel comes over—no phone call and no knock on the door, just barges in—and when she hangs her coat up she sees my feet and screams like a banshee, like my feet are so hideous, like she’s never seen my scabby slippers, like a woman can’t meditate in her own damn coat closet if she wants to.
Word Length: 461

Photo by Rdsmith4

Christmas in May

13 May

Working Title: O Holy Night
1st Sentence: The scent of vanilla, the wood smoke, her hands.
Favorite Sentence: The director’s arms, our highest soprano and lowest bass, my belly, his nose, her trembling lips, his closed eyes, my feet pushing to tiptoe—we were just one gorgeous cascade of sound, one joyful noise.
Word Length: 457

Photo: I”m so proud of this wreath I made last Christmas. Not so proud of the picture….

Total Lemon

12 May

I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. The first 11 stories of my Daily Shorty project please me. Either I consider them worth revising and likely one day submittable or I know they will amuse a loved one or a friend. Or the story makes me laugh or scratches an itch or contains a character or a sentence I love. This story? None of the above.

Working Title: Honey Peas
1st Sentence: Do you know that old rhyme about peas and honey?
Favorite Sentence: And I wave her across the street, watching those long linen skirts she favors brushing her ankles above the leather lacework of her sandals.
Word Length: 349

Photo by Bordercolliez, June 2011.

What clichés do you lean on?

11 May

I noticed a couple of years ago that I have a thing about men’s watches (but only as a writer). If I want to show that a man is full of himself, I give him a Rolex. If I want to show that he doesn’t care about someone he’s talking to, I make him glance at his watch. It pays to notice what clichés you tend to lean on, not just so you can better your habits—I go back and strip out most of my references to watches—but so that you can look for gold in what obsesses you. This morning I thought about my watch habit and decided to build the day’s shorty around a man who can’t stop looking at his watch.

Working Title: My Very Own Fairy Tale
1st Sentence: On actual bended knee.
Favorite Sentence: I couldn’t think how to get it back, how to shape my tongue to the vanishing glide of  the letter Y, much less the E, much less the S.
Word Length: 608

Why sports?

10 May

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.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →