Back to the well of inspiration from the Leslie Anderson paintings posted at Shanti Arts Publishing for the purpose of the contest they’re running with the Maine Writers & Publishers Association. Today’s shorty was inspired by Anderson’s Fair Night. I was happy with my start but I couldn’t execute this story well, likely partly because I’ve been doing a lot of editing work at Hunger Mountain and so I’m particularly mentally tired. I hope I can liven it up when I’m able to go back and revise.
Working Title: Natural Habitat
1st Sentence: The deep-fried turkey legs were running ahead of the gigantic gobs of pink and blue cotton candy, but only just.
Favorite Sentence: In our thirty minutes of viewing time, the woman fished out and ate, according to Jason, twelve cashews.
Word Length: 901
Photo by Andrew Dunn at Cambridge Midsummer Fair 6/2005.
So thankful for these lovely paintings by Leslie Anderson and to 
I hope my Maine writer friends will be entering this short story 
Maine writers, here’s a short story 
Maine writers, take note! The 
A logical progression! But don’t think about that, think about this gorgeous baked Alaska you may share with me as I celebrate finishing Week 24!
The husband points out a new theme in my shorties: cultish religion. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because I recently saw “The Master”?
Today’s shorty came right off the top of my head, inspired by something silly I said to my husband earlier in the day. And I like it!
Sometimes I get a story idea that I really like but I can’t produce a single decent sentence to get me going, so I type the idea into a running Idea File and move on. The idea that inspired this story occurred to me a couple of months ago, then went to the Idea File after I gave it a good try and failed to produce anything. I didn’t have to find it in the file, though, because it’s been sitting in the back of my mind, waiting for me to luck into that decent sentence. Today: Score!
I’m still getting a fair amount of shorties that come in odd packages. I’ve written a lot of stories in different narrative forms (e.g., cosmetic package instructions, a brochure), so I don’t mean that. I mean that once I got into my third month of shorties, I started getting these little globs of story that feel complete but don’t have an obvious story arc. Today’s shorty is one of these and it ends with a kind of word-tic that I would never have tried if I weren’t pushed to extremes by this project. But why not??
I want to know if the things I’ve learned in this experiment can help me with old problems. So far the answer is more yes than no. A story I started a couple of years ago came back to me today. I opened the old file, looked at all the text (something over 3,000 words) and notes about what I wanted to accomplish, and just felt tired. Then the truer bits began to show themselves and I realized that this was a clear case of “vision run wild.” There was a simple story trying to get out of all that mess. So I wrote that simple story as the day’s shorty.
I like the easy ones! Next!
Crème brûlée for me for finishing another week! Isn’t it lovely? Today I tried a new kind of reclaiming of material. I have been working on the foundation story for a linked collection for about three years. The story is over-ambitious, and, so far, un-write-able. I’ve produced something like a 100 pages of material but still don’t have the right draft—soooo frustrating and possibly responsible for this project. The last 5 months have been a welcome (if labor-intensive) break from The Unfinishable Story. Since I’ve been doing so much reclaiming, lately, I got it in my head today to grab a chunk of that story and try to create a shorty out of it. I had fun with it but I don’t think I was successful, really. It’s a complete shorty but it has no punch. Maybe I’ll try again or maybe I’ll write shorties for some of the other characters in that world. Or maybe that’s just playing with fire….
I try to suspend judgment to some extent because this experiment is all about process and practice. We all write material we discard and we almost always produce our best work only after careful, thoughtful revision. But sometimes I can’t help but get cranky. Today’s shorty came from a scene I wrote a week or two ago then cut from a story because it didn’t belong. But the scene was good. I saw how to make something of it, so I did. I made a very nicely crafted, well-written piece of CRAP.
I love it when I can reclaim material. I wrote part of today’s story a few weeks ago but I couldn’t get into it. It stuck in my mind, though, and today I decided to give it another shot. This time: A story! Of course, that means I didn’t use today that process I talked about at the start of the week but I’m too excited to care.
My dad’s a bit of a hoarder and I catch myself drifting that way occasionally. One day I might write a good story about hoarding. But not today. Next, please.
Day 3 of this process of trying to force connections between three paragraphs generated in succession but without obvious surface connection, then developing story form there. For today’s shorty I wound up building the story from the first two and cutting the third original paragraph. I like the third paragraph so I’ll try starting the next story with that one.
For this “non-prompt” week I’m formalizing a process that I’ve stumbled into before: Think of phrases and sentences until something takes hold. Then instead of exploring what that phrase/sentence brings to mind, beginning to sketch out how it might make a story, just write what flows from it. Then skip a space and do this again. And skip another space and do it again. Then develop transitions between the unconnected pieces until a narrative that feels alive begins to take shape. Cut anything that doesn’t serve the emerging story and write to an end. Go!
I want to do a week with no prompts to see where my head is and how the process goes. If I can’t come up with something I’ll go looking for inspiration but for now it’s back to just letting my mind wander into story ideas.
With my October 1st story, I can celebrate the completion of Week 22! The treat in the photo is a slice of “lemon burst” cake, purchased at a coffee shop in Perkins Cove, Ogunquit. Between the husband and me I think we downed 4 of these when we were there. This one made it home to pose for the camera before I attacked it. Mmm.
I’m not sure this experiment of writing a week of stories inspired by Haystack (three of which I set in a Haystack-like place) did much for story-quality but I enjoyed immersing myself in the thoughts I had while at Haystack, as I flipped through my photos and notes in search of story. The day’s shorty was an odd one with a really forced ending but I have hope that some of the material can be reworked someday.
Well, I did it! I have completed my FIFTH month of the Daily Shorty Challenge! I am shocked and really I shouldn’t think too much about it. Instead I will dream about these celebration profiteroles. Dream with me?
I won’t top this. I could not BE more satisfied with this project right now. Let the record show that at just before 1:00 AM, I completed the day’s shorty, which I worked on all day, off and on, and which just so happens to be the resurrection of a story I tried to write in the first half of 2009, and then returned to a number of times the last couple of years, failing each time to complete a draft. I didn’t even open those earlier Word files. I just re-imagined the basic idea of the story, which happened to come to mind because it fit so well with my trip to Haystack, and this time, after starting from scratch with a new opening image, I just insisted on finishing it. I really like it, too, but that could be all about the victory of the finished draft, and so what if it is. Ahh, happy days. And many thanks to Cheryl Wilder, who said, you want a little Emily Dickinson? I’ll give you a little Emily Dickinson. And I’ll do it in 5 minutes flat. Damn, Girl!
A bell tolls at Haystack at meal times and when it’s time to meet for a talk or someone has to make an announcement. That felt old fashioned and very… communal.
I was at Haystack for a cultural summit that took place over about a 24-hour period. When we summiters woke up the second day and headed to the dining hall, we discovered a treat: Some of our brethren (I think they were all men) stayed up late the night before and with the help of some high-octane inspiration they set to work on… chair sculptures! This is one of the four they made. The protagonist of the day’s shorty handcrafts chairs from reclaimed materials.
I was fascinated at Haystack by the rows and rows of wooden steps leading from the main campus area and down past the dorms and to the water’s edge. This is one of my many photos of them at various angles.
In the dining room the lovely folks at Haystack kept a huge cookie jar and a bowl of cider, as well as carafes of coffee and hot water for tea. When I discovered this a man was reaching into the cookie jar and looked at me, shouting, “World’s biggest cookie jar!”—I was annoyed that I didn’t have my camera handy. The next day the cookie jar was in the kitchen, so I snapped this photo through the pass-through. You can see the cookie jar on the counter next to the base of a food processor (as well as the reflection of it in the window). But you can’t tell how big it is. Just trust me that it’s enormous. And it was full of yummy chocolate cookies.
I just attended a cultural summit at 
Sure, you hear about Maine’s lobster and chowder, all those sweet blueberries, the gorgeous coastline, the rich history of great writing and art. But did you know that Maine boasts chocolate shops that will make you weep with gratitude? Well, I weep. Maybe you can indulge without tears. To celebrate my completion of another week in my Daily Shorty Challenge, enjoy with me this plate of chocolates I bought at Perkins Cove Candies in Ogunquit, Maine, which now holds the revered title of Claire’s Favorite Chocolate Shop, a coveted honor indeed. Pictured here are 3 orange creams, a peanut butter cup, a caramel, and their chocolate-to-slay-all-others, a cashew turtle. All in dark chocolate, of course. Oh, dear. I’m weeping.
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!
Daily Shorty 