My friend Natalia Sarkissian did a Daily Shorty week in early March. She loves writing prompts and sent me a handful. I chose a photo of a red door (similar to the one pictured here) that I couldn’t get out of my head. In fact that red door took up so much of my brain space that it took me many, many tries to get anything on the page that would hold. Finally I was able to get something out before falling asleep in the wee hours. It’s got some promise but I had to force an ending that doesn’t work. Maybe it will grow into something better one day. If the staying-power of that photo is any indication, it will. Many thanks to Natalia!
Working Title: Red
1st Sentence: The audience wants her to choose the red door.
Favorite Sentence: He lets his eyebrows climb his forehead, throws his arms up in a dramatic display of don’t ask me, mugs at the audience and the camera.
Word Length: 308
Photo by Si Griffiths 3/2005.
Oh, the heartache of finding this story. Finally pulled it out but left some gaps. I think it’ll be a keeper when I can get back to it, though. This marks my last day of a week of prompts using the 
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 
So this is the fourth time I’ve traveled during the DS challenge. I left Wednesday first thing for Boston, where AWP is holding its annual conference. I’d forgotten how hard it is to be in a different place and keep up with my story-a-day promise. Ergh. Anyway, if I can figure out what this piece is missing, maybe I’ll make some progress on how to write good stories that are fewer than 250 words. The shorty is almost good but… isn’t. And I have absolutely no idea how I got from this 
I’m always hesitant to say that I’ve learned any particular thing with regard to writing because I never know how the ground will shift tomorrow. But I think I can say that I have taught myself how to write very short. Not teeny-tiny, mind you—I don’t know that I will ever be able to write good pieces that are, say, 250 words or fewer. That is a feat I can barely comprehend. But I have now written a fat handful of pieces under 500 words that I like a lot. Given that I couldn’t do that at all before this challenge, I feel pretty excited. The shorty this picture of the day at 
This photo of a Russian palace, the picture of the day at 
My first sustained period of mental fatigue hit hard in August. I beat it back by using various kinds of story prompts for a while. Then I fell into the habit of a week of prompts, a week of no prompts, followed by a period of anything goes. I was feeling so exhausted as March began (I’m writing this catch-up post on March 19) that I reached again for prompts as a solution. My DS weeks begin on Tuesdays, so on March 5 I started a week using the “picture of the day” at 
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!
Today’s inspiration: a torn piece from a catalog. On one side of the page is a lovely young woman with long blond hair in a prettified out-doors-ey outfit that includes a fancy scarf. On the other side, a sweet, girlish, hand-crafty bracelet at top and a rockin’ pair of studded harness boots at bottom. I studied both sides of the page for something around 5 minutes, then wrote a story that included none of these things but did feature a photographer trying to take pretty pictures. My silly image at the top of the post is a goofy catalog-page-like decoration that I assembled from pretty pics of things similar to what’s on my page scrap.
I wrote part of this story during the 3-hour drive to Haystack. More on this beloved Maine institution very soon but for now I’ll just announce to the world that every delightful thing you’ve heard about it is TRUE. What an extraordinary treat. And amidst all the great pleasures of the day, I was able to find enough time to finish the story. My prompt was the photo of shells here, which I gazed at for a few minutes before packing the car. Then I meditated on my memory of the shells for a while and… wrote a story about Komodo dragons, of course!
This has been a very tough few days. Yet again I struggled to produce a complete story. Yet again I wrote a lot of words I had to toss. An easy one very soon, please?
This one took 5 starts. That seems to be my limit—once I hit 5 my goal is to amuse myself. And I did. Long live Martha B. Kitchen.
Oh, the humble fish stick. When I was a kid fish sticks seemed special because they were so different from the standard dinners we ate all the time—hot dogs, fried chicken, tiny hockey-puck hamburgers, pork chops when we were lucky. My childhood love of crispy, fishy rectangles might have something to do with my adult passion for the grown-up version and a Maine specialty: fish and chips. Mmm, the fried haddock here in Maine. I do love a good lobster roll but I never, ever turn down fish and chips.
I remember when I began to bust out shorties that I had strong affection for but that arrived in unfamiliar shapes and with endings that maybe weren’t endings. That started in July and all those unfamiliar shapes, as much as my busy days, have delayed my Story Facts and favorites pages for July and August. I just don’t know how to judge some of these stories. For now I think that must be a good thing—I have faith that I’m teaching myself something new. Or at least teaching myself how to wander into the tall weeds with less fear. Anyway, today’s shorty is one of these inscrutables, inspired by the photo above. I really like it, partly because two silly rhyming songs from my girlhood made an appearance. But is it good? I have no idea.
So frustrating! Yesterday I got the story like a whole gift dropped in my lap. Today I tried in the morning, then late morning, then early afternoon, then late afternoon, then early evening. I was so desperate from all the trying that when I got to early evening I wrote a half-page of material that I’d decided before wasn’t going to go anywhere but then I did something I occasionally do to kick-start myself: I hit return and wrote an absurd sentence. Then the husband took me to dinner. When we got back I went back to my absurd sentence and wrote the rest of the story in “make myself laugh” mode. The result is a very odd, very silly story that, yes, makes me laugh. Next!
This photo was the “picture of the day” at 
Another personal photo as shorty prompt, this one of the outrageous bed in our room in an Ogunquit B&B. I laughed in glee when I saw that thing and snapped my first picture of the trip before de-pillowing. It took a good 20 minutes to find out-of-the-way places to store all the pillows on that bed. As for the shorty, good idea but poor execution, despite much, much time invested. Next.
Well, I’m very sad as I write this. I’m participating in this round of my friend 
Saying goodbye to Week 16, but I’ll have to delay my virtual treat by one day in favor of posting the picture I used for today’s shorty. This story came to me very quickly and whole, so was fun and easy to write. And I like it. Overall I consider my week of photo prompts very successful. The stories came out odd but I like that. I sometimes had trouble going deep but don’t I always. I do think starting with the photo stripped a layer of effort or pressure from the shorty mission. To sum: I will do this again.
Another really tough one and again, doesn’t match up to my vision but there’s hope for when I can come back to it.
I really like my vision for this but it didn’t come out so well. Hopefully I can ramp it up in revision.
Had to fight hard for this one but wound up with something I really enjoy.
Three starts today to get a shorty. And this is the third in my experimental “photo series” and today I’m really pleased with what I wrote. If forced to think like a critic I’m not sure how highly I’d rate this story but I went deep today, something I haven’t been able to do lately. You know when you’ve written something that matters. Not all stories that matter will be publishable, but in the end “publishable” is someone else’s lookout.
Well, here’s what I can say so far about this experiment with photo prompts: Both yesterday and today I did come up with a shorty pretty quickly and I wrote each with relative speed and ease. They are both odd, and I like that. But both lack… depth and feeling. Of course it’s not like I never have that problem otherwise. And maybe the photo series shorties will get better. On to the next!
In the last few weeks I’ve been finding ways to defeat an increasing sense of mental fatigue. More on some of the tricks I’ve developed another time, but here’s my latest: I’ve brainstormed a list of types of prompts I can use to inspire shorties. On a given week I will use a particular kind of prompt every day. I fear that my mind will not love this kind of constraint and the overall quality of the shorties will suffer. But for now I want to see if using prompts reduces at least one kind of mental work by relieving me of the burden of creating a story idea out of nothing and everything. My Daily Shorty weeks start on Tuesday so today I began a week-long story series using 7 selected photos from my recent trip to Ogunquit, Maine.
Daily Shorty 