Daily Shorty

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.

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

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

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

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.

Maria, aka “Mussolin-a”

In my third semester of my MFA program, my mentor wrote on a story, “I begin to believe you can’t write a story without a cat in it.” I eliminated the cat from the story I was drafting when I read his note and I have tried not to over-use cats ever since. But they do sneak in…. I mentioned a cat in May 1’s story but only as part of a simile. A cat appeared in the story I wrote for May 3 but it was only just a mention, the cat didn’t even get a name. Ditto May 5. But a cat with a name shows up, here. I think waiting a whole week to include a cat-as-character shows excellent restraint.

Working Title: Madame Asbury, Knower of All Secrets
1st Sentence: Her first pair of gloves were crisp white linen.
Favorite Sentence: A dirty palm would flutter in the cradle of her sweating, velvet hand, while she flung words she had learned from old movies and silly paperbacks her mother had left untended, while she traced life lines and counted creases and soothed or baffled or bedeviled, whatever her mood of the day.
Word Length: 1,707

When my friend Dre saw a Rebounder trampoline in my apartment, it reminded her of something she’d heard—that when these tiny trampolines first came out, Amish women were excited about them and tried to use them for exercise. Sadly, their skirts got in the way. I jotted this anecdote down and promised to write a story about it one day.

Working Title: For the Glory of God, Rebound
1st Sentence: They hardly talked about it when they picked it up.
Favorite Sentence: “You could walk just fine on ugly legs.”
Word Length: 1,004