Month: May 2018

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StoryADay May – Day 13 – Hansel & Gretel

Hi writers! Today’s prompt builds on the fairy tale theme we started yesterday. Instead of a life-changing event happening in the middle of the story, as in “The Ugly Duckling,” we’re going to start off with a life-changing event right at the start.  In “Hansel and Gretel,” the story opens with two children about to be abandoned by their famine-struck parents, a poor woodcutter and his wife.

Day 13 Prompt: “Start with a life-changing moment and lead your characters through the story to show us who they become.”

Does your main character lose something? A loved one? A job? A home? Does he learn something that changes the way he looks at the world? If you’re stumped, take a minute to make a “Best and Worst” list. Write down the top 5 best things that could happen to you in your life. And then the 5 worst things. Pick one and let it happen to your character.

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StoryADay May – Day 12 – Ugly Duckling Story

Hi writers! Yesterday in “812.54 WIL” I wrote a little story about the life of the library book I’m reading. It got me thinking about how one could use an object or place as the focal point for a collection of stories. A handful of stories about all of the people who have lived in the same house over the years, for example, or the generations in a family who have owned the same family heirloom.

Today’s StoryADay prompt is a riff off of the classic Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling.” I’m including a link to the story if, like me, it has been a while since you read it (or had it read to you).

Day 12 Prompt: Write an “Ugly Duckling”-type story, where the main character has a life-changing moment in the middle of the story.

The life-changing event can be something that happens to the character. Or it can be something that takes place internally, within your character. Some realization that he or she comes to that changes everything.

Good luck writers!

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StoryADay May – Day 11 – Inanimate [updated: 812.54 WIL]

The piece I wrote yesterday, “In the Belly of the Whale,” wound up being pretty short, even for flash fiction. If it is too short to be a flash, maybe it’s a flicker?

Something is going on over at the StoryADay website, and today’s prompt is not up yet. I like to at least start writing in the morning, so I’m going to make my own prompt. You can use it too or keep checking StoryADay for an update.

Day 11 Prompt: Write a story from the point of view of an inanimate object. But the story has to be about people. Tell me about the commuters passing by a statue in the park, the people who have owned a rare coin, the women who have slipped on a vintage pair of sunglasses. What stories does a cobblestone in an Italian piazza hold, or a bench along Champs Elysees? What about something ordinary, like your coffee mug, or your pen? Tell me about how it was made, about the factory workers, the delivery person, the sales clerk in the museum gift shop.

[updated]

812.54 WIL

A New Directions Paperback No. 501, ISBN: 0-8112-0765-X, Copyright 1947, printed in 1980, the one with the black and white photo on the front of Vivian Leigh doing her best Blanche DeBois. Her eyes are so far-away looking, they look painted on, like a mannequin’s, her hair in pin curls all around her face. There used to be a little circulation card inside the front cover. The pocket is still there, but the card’s long gone. Almost forty years. Not bad for a softbound book. And there’s life in her yet. You can thank the laminated cover for that.

The book has been places. And not just back and forth to the city on the L train. Not just tucked into beach bags headed for New Buffalo, Holland, Saugatuck. No, it has poked from rucksacks, backpacks, shoulder bags thrown to the scuffed linoleum floors of dressing rooms, backstage at acting workshops or community theaters, hung on hooks in coffee shops and dive bars, tossed in a heap of jackets at cast parties, dress rehearsals, and opening nights.

What fodder for a budding anthropologist. The accumulated tic marks alone. The shy penciled underlining, the bold marginalia—cues, stage directions, pneumonic devices for remembering lines—in the dog-eared pages, buried treasure of ticket stubs pinched tight in the binding.

And here, a thumbprint of hamburger grease from a young, ambitious Stanley Kowalski. The kid couldn’t act, but no one knew that yet. For one season he channeled Stanley, down to the silky bowling shirt—“Perfect!” they said, just perfect—pulled from his own closet. He didn’t need to act, he was a Stanley. And, though she had no idea, he was truly in love with the sweet young college girl that played his Stella. Why buy what you can borrow, right? And so the fresh new laminated paperback was plucked from the shelf, for the very first time, for an extended stay in the boy’s back pocket. Rechecked three times and, finally, returned late, after, by popular demand, a two-week extension of the initial run.

Then look here, from a decade on, a smudge of brown lipstick and, if you bend close and breathe deeply, the faintest whiff of CK One, traces of the girl who played Blanche that summer, in a little theater by the train tracks. They found that if they timed it just right, trimmed a bit off of the poker scene, the train would roar through the middle of Scene Four, playing the part of the streetcar, giving Stanley cover as he eavesdropped on Blanche and Stella in the next room.

A few years later, the book was in the backpack of a quiet high-school kid, his face pressed against the window of the charter bus taking his English class to New York City. The kid was no actor, but he would have made a good Mitch. His mother was dying, like Mitch’s, and he too loved a girl who was a little bit crazy. They were supposed to see the play performed that Thursday night. Instead, two planes flew into two buildings, and changed everything. The boy’s backpack, furred in white dust, lay for months on a shelf, with so much other debris, until finally a volunteer rummaged inside. There was nothing to identify the owner, except, in the front pocket, a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. Property of the River Forest Public Library. The volunteer made a call, the boy was named, his backpack sent to his mother, and the book, slipped into a yellow envelope, found its way back on the shelf.

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StoryADay Day 10 – Flash Fiction [updated: In the Belly of the Whale]

Day 10 writers! A third of the way (more or less). Whether you’ve written one story, or 10, are you having fun? Are you writing more (and finishing more) than you otherwise would have? Then the challenge is a success. I’m running at a slight deficit myself, but have a couple of plane rides ahead of me I plan on using to get all caught up.

Today’s prompt is about creating some flash fiction. In the age of the Internet and blogs, this form has really come into its own. There are flash fiction contests galore and lots of publication calls for flash fiction pieces. We’re going to do a whole month of flash fiction in February (because, alliteration). There are lots of definitions out there, but the only real limitation is length. Flash should be short. Not as short as a 100-word drabble, but shorter than a traditional short story. About 1000 words. The reader literally just gets a flash, one scene. Something is happening and the curtain is ripped back, we get a tantalizing glimpse, can see where the whole thing is going, and then, show’s over. Except it’s not. The flash was provocative, compelling, and so the story continues in the reader’s mind. I read somewhere that all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But all of those pieces do not necessarily have to be on the page.

Check out some examples here.

Day 10 Prompt: “Write a story in under 1000 words focusing on creating one brilliant image in your reader’s mind … Make sure your story is about one thing, one moment. Aim to change your reader’s mind about something, whether it’s a person, an experience or a condition of life.”

[updated]

Here’s my flash piece. I thought I would have trouble keeping it under 1000 words, but once I got it in my head that it would not be a tidy narrative but just a glimpse at a world in which a whole lot more is going on, I wound up coming in way under 1000 words.

In the Belly of the Whale

The boy had a dream, once, that he was in the belly of a whale. He could feel it surging forward, plunging and rising in clouds of bubbles that reached him as a faraway drumming. And when he could no longer feel or hear it in that way, he still knew, from a ticking in his inner ear, or from the sudden uneasy shifting of his stomach, that the thing moved. Eventually, whether the creature stopped or whether the boy became acclimated to its watery gymnastics, there was nothing but the plinking echo of drops in a watery cave, the muffled thump and hum of the creature’s organs.

The boy felt no hunger, could not even summon the memory of hunger. And, though he did not sleep, he was lulled into a slumberous state. From time to time he made small movements, in his extremities, to reassure himself that he was still there.

It was hot. An animal that size is, first and foremost, a furnace, churning fuel into energy at an unfathomable rate. From time to time the boy felt the whale opening itself, as if on hinges, letting great expanses of ocean flow through it. He pictured hordes of sightless little barely-there organisms trapped in the riffling furrows of the great combs that lined the whales jaws—surfaces like the undersides of giant toadstools, hideous in their intricacy.

The boy had often pictured himself cowering under such toadstools, their caps glossy red or yellow with white dots, shades of blood and bile that hissed “poison!” in the mush-muted palette of a primeval forest. Mushrooms of such size were the preferred hiding places of children in the brutal nursery rhymes his German grandmother told him, the rushing river of her words slamming itself into hard consonants.

The boy was cowering under one now. Just like that. The whale was gone and the boy was alone in the angry darkness, full of the hiss and snarl of prowling things, the patter and screech of things, like him, imperfectly hidden. Cool air swished past him, like a puff from the mouth of a cave. Something was scissoring toward the boy, in the dark. Something that pulsed. Ominous, baleful, portending doom. It never arrived. It was always coming.

* * *

The man on the couch looks up at the doctor, asks wearily, “Does that answer your question?” The clock ticks on the wall.

The doctor sets down his pen and pad of paper. In an hour, he has written almost nothing down. “It does. Yes, it can be like that, sometimes. Like the belly of a whale.” The doctor seems to be thinking of something. “The mushrooms. All of it.” The clock ticks.

After a moment, “I’m going to prescribe you something, Dennis.”

Silence.

“Dennis, will you let me help you?” The doctor rises from his chair, puts his hand on the man’s shoulder.

But the man is gone. A little boy sits on the couch, his back hunched in a silent sob. His pupils are huge, as if he’s just stepped out of the darkness and into the light.

“Yes. Thank you, yes.”

[Day 11: 529 words]

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StoryADay May – Day 9 – Desire

Hello writers! We are nine days into StoryADay May! This is really challenging! But also empowering. I have a confession to make. In January I signed up for the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. I was super excited. I had 7 days to write a short story and was assigned a genre, character, and an object I needed to incorporate into the story. I had what I thought was a pretty good idea. I parked myself in a coffee shop that weekend and … nothing. I typed a sentence. I erased it. I typed another. I erased it. I scribbled some notes in my notebook. I put it off. I wound up not submitting anything, because I realized a couple of days before the deadline that I wouldn’t have time to write anything that was very good. I wish I could go back and do it again! Not that I think what I have been writing this month is competition-winning material, but you know what, I can turn an idea into words on a page. I’m doing it. And the more times I do it, the less paralyzed I feel at the start. That’s what this challenge is all about.

So let’s keep writing! Here’s today’s prompt from StoryADay:

Day 9 Prompt: “Establish, within the first couple of sentences, your character’s desire. Put them in a situation that conflicts with that desire. Tell us how it works out.”

I just have to say, this is not so much a short story prompt as a definition of a short story. Your character wants/needs something and works to try to get it. I feel like we can do better. Here are three additional suggestions you might try, based, as my math test story “Sibling Rivalry” from yesterday was, on prompts from John Dufresne’s book, FLASH! Writing the Very Short Story.

– Maybe all your character wants is to survive. Write a very short horror story based on an urban legend. Check out this terror-inspiring list.

– Maybe all your character wants is to be heard. Write a story where two characters are in bed (or some other intimate setting) and having a conversation. Except they are really having two conversations. Neither one is responding to the other. They’re just talking right past each other.

– Your character is on the road, trying to get somewhere. Tell a story that takes place in a train, plane, or automobile.

Happy writing!

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StoryADay May – Day 8 – Conflict [updated: Sibling Rivalry]

Yesterday’s story, “Freya’s Return,” was meant to be a character sketch but wound up being a story about the relationship between two people, told through the life (and rebirth) of their dog.

I think I’m doing a pretty poor job of following the prompts. But … I’m writing stories!

Let’s get thinking about today’s prompt:

Day 8 Prompt: “Put your character in a mundane, everyday situation. Then introduce a strong element of conflict.” 

And as your character tries to resolve the conflict, throw obstacles in his or her way. As Nabokov said, “[t]he writer’s job is to get the main character up in a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”

[updated]

When I thought of conflict I immediately wanted to write about sibling rivalry. And I decided to do something different and write my story in the form of a math problem. This is one of the nontraditional story forms suggested by John Dufresne in his book, FLASH! Writing the Very Short Story (see also, story as diary entry, personal ad, restaurant review, list, product advertisement, business memo, postcard). I was having some fun so I kept going and made it a little math test. I borrowed language from story problems I found on the Internet, but it has been a LONG time since I studied math, so please forgive me if the problems are not actually solvable.

Sibling Rivalry

1.  Carlos has taken several large doses of a prescription medication. The relationship between the elapsed time, t, in hours, since he took the first dose, and the amount of medication, M(t), in milligrams (mg), in his bloodstream is modeled by the following function:

M(t) = 20 ∙ e-0.8t

 In how many hours will Carlos have 1 mg of medication remaining in his bloodstream? Round your answer, if necessary, to the nearest hundredth.

2.  Five minutes before taking the medication, Carlos calls his younger sister, Graciela. Carlos and Graciela, long estranged, speak for five minutes before Carlos hangs up. Graciela, doubting Carlos’s sincerity and recalling past incidents that were mere cries for help, waits 5 minutes before leaving her house. But Carlos says he has a letter for Graciela. And he convinces her that it will be in her best interest to arrive first on the scene to retrieve it. Graciela leaves her house at 2:15 p.m.

Graciela lives with her husband Craig in a sprawling gated community on the other side of town from Carlos’s apartment. It is a small town, only three miles square, and Graciela owns a fancy new SUV, but she is careful with it, and never exceeds the posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour. At 2:25 p.m., a train will pass by, just a block from Carlos’s apartment. If Graciela has not passed the tracks, she will have to stop and wait for the train to clear the tracks. This typically takes 4 minutes, but seems much longer.

Six minutes after calling his sister, Carlos calls 911. After 3 minutes on the line, 911 dispatch identifies Carlos’s location and notifies the local fire department. The closest fire station is 2.6 miles from Carlos’s apartment, on Carlos’s side of the train tracks. An ambulance, lights flashing and siren blaring, is immediately deployed, travelling 45 miles per hour.

Who will reach Carlos’s apartment first?

3.  Carlos is a high school band teacher. Finding himself between jobs, five years ago Carlos borrowed ​$500 from a storefront payday loan operation. Securing the loan with his most prized possession, an $8000 tuba, Carlos agreed to pay $95 biweekly. After six loan extensions, and having paid the maximum fees allowed by law, Carlos has still not paid off his loan. What is the total amount of interest that Carlos has paid? How much does he still owe?

4.  As a side gig, Carlos hauls music equipment from Chicago’s O’Hare airport to the Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, MI, 86 miles away. Carlos’s old conversion van gets 14 mpg. Gas is currently $2.78/gallon in New Buffalo and $2.92/gallon in Chicago. Carlos gets paid $150 per trip. What is his net profit?

5.  Carlos sometimes stays to play blackjack at the casino while he waits to meet the stage manager. He winds up ahead only 34% of the time. But he gets meals comped and sometimes gets to see the band for free. How long will it take for Carlos to realize this is not the same as breaking even?

6.  Three weeks ago, Carlos and Graciela’s mother, Esperanta Ruiz, died of natural causes on her 99th birthday. Esperanta’s last will and testament, drafted by the family lawyer when Carlos and Graciela were children, provides that her modest estate, including her single-family home on a quiet, tree-lined street (value: $380,000) and her collection of autographed George Orwell memorabilia (value: $25,000), should be divided equally between her two children. Under this will, would Carlos’s inheritance cover his current debt? Would it provide him with a nice little down payment on a home in Wisconsin he has been eyeing, up in the North Woods, where he can fish and meditate and write a New York Times bestselling novel?

7.  Shortly after Esperanta’s death, a second will surfaced, drafted by Graciela’s lawyer just weeks before Esperanta’s death. This will leaves everything to Graciela. Graciela hires a legal team to defend this will in court and it is upheld. Graciela’s lawyer charges $500/hr and bills 127 hours to her case. Two associate attorneys, each billing $300/hr, bill 230 and 97 hours to the case, respectively. Costs, including filing fees, expert witness and court reporter fees, plus the cost of the very fancy legal pads and fountain pens Graciela’s lawyer insists on using, come to $10,289.56. Did Graciela spend more defending the will than she inherited? Was it still worth it?

8.  Graciela is married to Craig, a multi-millionaire movie producer with expansive holdings. Craig owns a Park Avenue penthouse worth $3.6 million more than his ranch in Colorado, and a chalet in the Swiss Alps that is worth twice as much as his Colorado estate and three times as much as his serialization rights in a blockbuster Hollywood action film, but only 1/4 the value of his classic car collection and 1/8 the value of his shares in a Silicon Valley startup. What is Craig’s net worth?

9.  Graciela and Craig have just celebrated their third wedding anniversary. Craig, who learned the hard way when his first marriage ended, insisted on a prenuptial agreement. The agreement provides that, if Graciela and Craig divorce within 5 years of their wedding day, Graciela receives nothing. On their fifth wedding anniversary, Graciela will receive a 1% interest in Craig’s estate. On their sixth wedding anniversary, she will receive an additional 2% interest in Craig’s estate; on their seventh anniversary, an additional 3% interest; on their eighth anniversary, an additional 4% interest; and on their ninth anniversary, an additional 5% interest. Under the agreement, adultery is grounds for immediate forfeiture of any interest Graciela has acquired in Craig’s estate. When Graciela and Craig have been married for ten years, the agreement expires, and the laws of the great state of Utopia, a community property jurisdiction, will apply in full force. How much money will Graciela have after each of her wedding anniversaries?

10. One week ago, Carlos left instructions with his lawyer to randomly deliver one of seven sealed envelopes to Craig each year on the day before Craig and Graciela’s wedding anniversary. Six of the envelopes contain unsolicited screenplay submissions, of the sort Craig receives hundreds of every week. The plots of three of the screenplays center on a young(ish) wife having an affair with the grown son of her rich, elderly husband. The seventh envelope contains photographic evidence of Graciela’s longtime affair with Craig’s adult son, Carlton. The letter that Carlos has for Graciela, that she is currently making her way across town to retrieve, is a copy of the lawyer’s instructions.

What are Graciela’s chances of living happily ever after?

Please show your work.

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StoryADay May – Day 7 – Character Sketch [updated: Freya’s Return]

I took yesterday’s prompt quite literally and for my story “A Nice Pinot Grigio,” not only stole an idea from myself, but a whole passage I’d written almost a decade and a half ago. Save those old notebooks, writers!

Today’s prompt is all about how character can drive a story. Put her in a situation and show us her reaction.

Day 7 Prompt: Pick one of the following 4 scenarios. How would your character deal with this situation?

  1. Backed into a corner, your character tells a lie to protect him/her self.
  2. Your character has been plotting blood-chilling revenge on someone. Now both are sitting down to dinner together.
  3. Your character goes to a psychic, who tells them something frightening that changes how they see their future.
  4. Your character is obsessed with something. They think they will do anything to obtain it. The person they love most in the world stands in their way.

[updated]

Well, I tried to do no. 4. I intended to write a story about a wife obsessed with cloning her dead dog, and her husband, who thinks it is a mistake and tries to keep her from doing it. It was supposed to be funny, and all about the wife’s character and her obsession, but it turned out to be a sort of tender story about the couple’s relationship, and their relationship to their dog. The obsession and the struggle sort of receded into the background.

Freya’s Return

Freya was a good dog. Steven certainly couldn’t argue with that. As a puppy, she’d been remarkably easy to house train. And she was a fine specimen of her breed. A beautiful toffee brown color, with a white nose, chest, and four white feet, as if she’d tipped forward into a bucket of paint and then scrambled out. Steven had done a fair amount of research, he recalled, before bringing her home to Dolores. Norwegian Lundehunds were small dogs, agile, hearty, advertised as “easy-to-live-with,” but quirky too, evolution having provided them with six toes on each foot and little pricked ears that could rotate like satellite dishes. Bred to roust puffins from tight spaces along the sea cliffs of Norway, lundehunds had extraordinary range of motion. Freya always concluded her morning stretch by bending her head backwards and touching her nose to her spine.

Dolores had been delighted. And little Freya had taken to her immediately, climbing the stairs to the writer’s loft he’d built above the garage and waiting patiently for attention, her little white muzzle resting on Dolores’s bare foot, her little back-springing tail twitching contentedly.

This was in the early days, when Steven and Dolores were both still aching, not only from the loss of their spouses, from the agony of their own powerlessness in the face of ravaging illness, but from the complete disruption of their life plans. Coming together at this time, they had fused to one another, almost as a matter of survival, selling the homes they had each intended to live out their days in, and purchasing this quiet house by the lake, with the big garden. They’d bought green Adirondack chairs and a firepit. In the evening, sipping wine and staring into the crackling fire, Freya content at their feet, Steven and Dolores were reassured that a Plan B could be built, not only on survival, but on happiness.

But time passed, and little Freya grew old. One morning she ran straight into a wall and sat, shaking her head as if a bee were buzzing in her ear. “All right there, girl?” Steven had taken her by the chin and looked in her eyes, and though she’d panted in recognition, she’d stared back at him with clouded eyes. When she could no longer manage the steep steps to the loft, Dolores had carried her, or wrote in the garden, where Freya could nap in a patch of morning sun.

There was, as there always is, eventually very bad news. They brought Freya home from the vet and Dolores just held her, for the longest time. Barely responsive, when they took her into the garden, Freya still raised her little nose to drink in the sweet summer air. Dolores wrapped her in blankets and sat, as Steven quietly made a fire and took his place beside her. After a while, though it was the middle of the night, he lit the grill and made hamburgers. And they cried together, briefly, when Freya tried to eat a mouthful but couldn’t. By morning, she was gone.

Dolores was calm. Resolute. Although this passing brought to mind other passings, perhaps reminded them that, by joining their lives, they had years ago accepted the dark cloud of future passings as the price paid for having someone nearby, for waking to see that person still sleeping, for moving, in a million silent, unchoreographed ways, in and out of each other’s space. But this time, Dolores had a plan. She had given it a great deal of thought. An unhealthy amount of thought, Steven had suggested, one morning at breakfast. Her plan  was disturbing to him, in a way he could not quite articulate. But in the end, he could deny Dolores nothing.

And so, when Freya’s little heart had finally stopped beating, when her little curving tail had given its last flutter of recognition at Delores’s voice, Dolores had wept, had stroked her little friend and wept some more, but then had closed the lids over the little clouded eyes, wrapped the dog’s body in wet towels, and placed it on the top shelf of the refrigerator, where it would remain until the VitaGen representative came the next morning to swab Freya’s mouth for skin cells.

The cells would be flown overnight to Maryland. Eggs would be harvested from a donor dog and pulsed with ultraviolet light to strip them of their genetic material. Then Freya’s DNA would be inserted, and, in a scene straight out of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, a burst of electricity would be applied, to fuse the DNA to its host and jumpstart cell division. And voila, an embryo, ready for implantation in a surrogate dog. In approximately 60 days, a puppy. Dolores had explained to him that, miscarriages being common, and the runt of the litter sometimes not surviving, it was standard to implant five embryos at a time. The probability of more than one or two surviving was slim.

But probabilities are just that. As it happened, delivered to their house one sunny spring morning were four carbon copies of the puppy Steven had brought home with him a decade and a half ago. Emerging from a tiny dog carrier like clowns from a circus car, they stumbled over one another to explore their surroundings before falling asleep in a little exhausted heap on the sun-warmed slate of the patio.

They would keep them for two weeks, just long enough for Dolores to determine which was the most Freya-like. She was strictly forbidden from naming the other three, who had adoptive homes waiting for them.

* * *

Steven rose early, the Sunday paper tucked under one arm, and slipped out to the garden with his coffee. As he turned to pull the sliding door behind him, Freya II wriggled through the gap and stared up at him, her little head cocked to one side. Come on then, he muttered, leaving the door ajar so he would not have to come back and let her in if she changed her mind. Freya II followed him somberly to the patio and watched him sink into one of the Adirondacks. She sat on her haunches, her great wealth of toes all lined up in a row, and observed him, not impolitely. Her demeanor was so serious, so unlike that of a frolicking puppy, that Steven could almost believe that she was the original Freya, reincarnated.

Dolores soon joined them—Freya II’s three sisters padding along behind her—and took her seat, sitting, as she always did, with one leg bent beneath her. Freya II bounded over and settled at the base of the chair, her little white muzzle draped over the top of Dolores’s slipper. Steven glanced up from his paper, in mild surprise, when two of the other puppies, having observed their sister, draped themselves in like fashion over his own two feet. The fourth, looking about in dismay, finally clambered up onto Steven’s lap, circled once, and settled in, nose to tail.

They sat like that for a few moments before Steven ventured: “Are there many other goddesses, in Norse mythology? Or is it just Freya up there in Valhalla, with Thor and Odin?

“Oh no, there are others,” Dolores said evenly, not looking up from her writing.

“Who are they, then?”

“Well, there’s Sigyn. She’s like a mother nature or earth goddess. And Zisa, goddess of the harvest.”

Steven flexed his feet, one at a time, still covered with sleeping puppies. “And …?” He set down his paper and picked up the puppy in his lap, as if to inspect her.

Dolores didn’t miss a beat. “And Frigg, of course. Goddess of love and marriage. And destiny, I think.”

“Goddess of destiny, huh?” Steven set the puppy back down and patted it on its head.

“Mmm-hmm.” Dolores glanced up, suppressing a little smile.

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StoryADay May – Day 6 – Steal From Yourself [updated: A Nice Pinot Grigio]

Even though I took yesterday’s prompt in a little different direction, I think I had more fun writing it than any other story so far. That seems in the spirit of the prompt, at least. Check out my story, about that truly magical bedtime story, The Little Prince.

Now, today’s prompt has got me pretty stumped. I’m going to have to let this one percolate for a while. Good luck, writers!

Day 6 Prompt: “Steal from yourself. Retell a story you’ve told before, in a new way. This exercise opens up opportunities in future, when you have a piece that isn’t quite working. You can cast your mind back to today and remember that yeah, there’s more one way to tell this story, too.”

[updated]

For this prompt I looked through some old notebooks, took something I wrote back in 2004, and decided to finally finish it. I re-wrote a lot of it. I guess my writing style has changed a bit in 14 years!

A Nice Pinot Grigio

She was the sort of person who wore jewelry, anything, really, for the way it felt, never for the look of it. The way a blind person would dress, Jake had always thought. Tonight, it was a smooth metal cuff hanging down over her wrist. It had no doubt slid up and down her arm as she went about her day. But now her hand rested calmly on the table, relaxed and extended slightly toward him as she studied her menu. The thin edge of the bracelet pressed against a single blue vein running over the top of her hand.

Her hand was like a dead fish in the middle of the table, motionless, pinioned by that flashing metal cuff. For some reason, Jake could not stop looking at it. He felt the barest sheen of sweat break out on his forehead.

“Should we order a bottle of wine?” She drummed her fingers against the tablecloth, once, twice, the bracelet pressing just a bit harder, then releasing, then pressing down again. The blue vein bulged slightly, in response.

“Of course, red or white?” He kept his head down, as if studying his menu, but his eyes were glued to her hand. He suddenly knew that she was doing this on purpose. He drank half of his water and forced himself to return to his menu.

What was her hand even doing there? It was ridiculous. Why didn’t she unfold her napkin, brush back her hair, anything? Something. Why display her hand and that disgusting bracelet? He would have been less revolted if she had brought out a small bag of dog shit and placed it neatly before him, between the sculpted butter and the bread basket. And she knew it.

“Oh, let’s get a nice Pinot Grigio,” she said, snapping her menu shut and shaking out her napkin with one hand, all the while never moving the hand with the bracelet. She looked up at him, eyes wide, all is that alright dear? “I was thinking of getting the salmon.”

His gaze returned again and again to the razor-thin edge of her bracelet. What would happen, he thought, if he just pressed down? A little at first, then a lot. The blue vein would rise up, as her hand stiffened and then squirmed under the pressure, her water spilling over, half-soaked rye dinner rolls ballooning up on the tablecloth.

He tore his eyes away and answered, aware that the pause had been too long, but that it didn’t matter. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “I think that would be just fine, dear.” He felt his mouth spread mechanically into a smile as his eyes met hers for the fist time since they’d sat down.

But then, some barely detectable movement caused the bracelet to wink, in the candlelight, like a lighthouse in the great white sea of tablecloth. His hand shot up involuntarily from his lap and covered hers, rubbing it, encircling it, and—crossing the line of neutrality—depositing it firmly on her side of the table.

She reclaimed it, casually, like a possession she’d misplaced and found again, folding both of her hands in her lap and smiling at him icily. And just like that, she had won. She won everything. If she could no longer make him touch her out of love, or lust, or pity even, she could still make him do it out of sheer revulsion.

And that’s when Jake knew, as he calmly ordered a bottle of wine; he would kill his wife.

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StoryADay May – Day 5 – Fan Fiction [updated: The Little Prince]

I was bad last night and didn’t finish my story! I wrote for forty minutes but wasn’t able to wrap it up in that timeframe. I thought about just posting what I had, but I am committed to 31 complete stories this month. So, stay tuned …

For now, on to the next prompt!

Day 5 Prompt: “Have some fun today: steal something from a favorite published universe. Remember, you can’t sell a derivative work without permission, or a license, but that’s not the point today. Today is all about having fun in a world you know well, or with characters you already love.”

Ooh, fan fiction. The possibilities for this are enticing. Harry Potter? Lord of the Rings? The wonderful world of Jane Austin?

[updated]

I was going to set my story in the world of that magical childhood favorite, The Little Prince. And part of my story does take place there, but only indirectly. Stories have lives of their own. This one was fun to see unfold.

The Little Prince

“ ‘And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.’ ” Sara snapped the book shut. Okay bud, time for bed.”

“But mom! Can we read a little more? Please? I’m not even tired!”

This was patently false. Will’s eyes were heavy, and she’d caught him blinking repeatedly during the sheep part. She hoped he was really interested in the story and not just stalling. It was one of her favorites.

“We can pick up where we left off tomorrow.” Will thrust his chin out in a little spasm of defiance and sulked at her. “And do you know what?” Sara continued, “We’ll find out tomorrow all about the little prince’s home. You know, he lives on his own planet. And guess what else?” Now she had him. “It’s actually an asteroid!”

“Really? How does he live on an asteroid? Don’t they go really fast?”

“We’ll have to wait and find out tomorrow. But trust me, he lives on an asteroid. And we’re going to read all about it. Good night, sweetie.”

“But mom?”

“Yeah baby?”

“I really want to read just one more page. Can we? Please? You will be my best mommy ever.” She had to laugh at his cheesy grin.

“Will. Come on. You have school tomorrow. And mommy …” Sara had a million things to do but was probably going to take a hot bath and go to bed early. It had been a long weekend. She was just about to put the book back on the shelf with the others when she stopped. “You know what? I have an idea.”

“What?”

“This is an old trick Nana taught me. If you put a book under your pillow, then when you fall asleep you can visit the book in your dreams.”

“Is that really true?” He seemed skeptical, but curious.

“Well, it worked for me. I remember a whole summer I stayed at Nana’s house and every night I climbed the Alps—those are big mountains—with a little girl named Heidi and her goats.” Sara paused for a minute. It was true, she thought, smiling. She hadn’t thought about that in so long. But every day she’d read that book with her grandmother, and every night she’d had the most delicious dreams about Heidi and her grandfather and the goats. Maybe it would be the same for Will. “Shall we try it?”

“Okay.” Will lifted his pillow and Sara slid the slim volume underneath. They smiled conspiratorially as she turned off the light.

* * *

“Mommy, mommy, it worked! It really worked, I am not even kidding!” Will burst into the kitchen, just as she was starting the coffee.

“What worked, honey?” Sara stifled a yawn. She couldn’t remember how many scoops she’d put in and had to dump the basket and started again. “And before you start telling me all about it, do you want waffles or Cheerios?” Once Will started talking, there was no stopping him.

“Cheerios.”

“The book, mom! The Little Prince! One minute I was lying in my bed, just starting to close my eyes, and the next minute … I was in a huge dessert! And do you know what I heard?” His face was so mischievous. Sara decided to play along. “A voice?” She set the bowl down in front of him at the counter and began slicing a banana over the top.

“Uh huh … and do you know what the voice said?”

“Um, take me to your leader?”

“No! It said, ‘If you please, draw me a sheep!’ Mommy, it was the little prince. He was in my dream, just like you said he would be!”

Sara smiled and ruffled Will’s hair. “Nana always did know the best tricks. I wish you could have met her buddy.” She poured herself some coffee and brought a stool around to sit across from him. “So what did you and the little prince do? Don’t tell me you went to his planet without me? We’re supposed to read that part tonight.”

“Um …” Will squirmed in his seat. “Yeah, we did. I’m sorry.”

“What!? I can’t believe it!”

His face lit up as he remembered something. “And it really was an asteroid, just like you said.”

“Mmm hmm.” Sara unwrapped the morning paper and began skimming the headlines.

“And it doesn’t have a name, only a number. Well, a letter and some numbers. Asteroid B-612.”

Sara paused, coffee mug halfway to her mouth, and looked at Will over her glasses. “Did the little prince tell you that?”

“No. I just knew what it was called. In my dream I just knew it. The little prince doesn’t call his planet that. He’s kind of mysterious about answering questions.”

Sara was sure they had not read that far yet. “Will, did daddy read The Little Prince to you?”

“No.”

“Did you watch a cartoon of it on TV?”

“No. Mom! I had a dream about it. I told you!”

“Okay, okay.” Will could sound out simple words now. He must been reading ahead. “Hurry up, honey, you need to get dressed for school.”

* * *

“ ‘ “Were you so sad, then?” I asked, “on the day of the forty-four sunsets?” But the little prince made no reply.’ ” Sara slipped a scrap of paper in the book for a bookmark and kissed Will on the forehead. “To be continued,” she said, sliding the book back into its place on the shelf.

She had installed the little shelf before Will was born, when they’d made the spare bedroom into a nursery. It had seemed like a good place for her Little Prince collection. Since she first began traveling, back in college, Sara had purchased a copy of the book in every country she’d visited. Almost every. She’d read once that The Little Prince was one of the most translated books in the world, but there were a few placed she’d been where she hadn’t been able to find a copy. Still, there were at least two dozen.

“No wait! Mommy! I need to put it under my pillow!”

Sara looked down at Will, sitting up straight in his bed. She was impressed that he remembered, and that he was willing to keep up the ruse. Who knew, maybe he’d actually had a dream about the little prince. She pulled the book back off the shelf and handed it to him. Will slid it somberly under his pillow and blew her a kiss.

* * *

“Con su permiso, dibujame una oveja!” No sooner had Will managed to get the words out than he erupted into a fit of giggles. “That’s what the little prince said this time. He’s funny, mommy. He was talking Spanish really fast, just like Ms. Nikolina.” Ms. Nikolina was his friend Bianca’s grandmother, who sometimes watched them after school, if Sara had a meeting that was ran late.

“Oh, does Bianca have The Little Prince too?” Maybe Ms. Nikolina had been reading the book to the kids in Spanish?

“No. Mommy, I could understand everything the little prince said, even though it was in Spanish.”

“Like when Ms. Nikolina speaks to you?”

“No! I don’t understand hardly anything she says! Bianca tells me everything in English.” He gave her a look that said “duh.”

Sara was stumped. Maybe they were learning Spanish in school? “Okay Mister, shoes, coat, backpack. Let’s go!”

At bedtime, when Will was brushing his teeth, Sara slipped her hand under his pillow and drew the book out. She froze. It was the Spanish translation. She must have grabbed the wrong one from the shelf the night before. Will ran across the room and dove into his bed, pulling the blankets up and settling in for his story. “Will, what does this say?” Sara held the book out to him, open to a random page.

He squinted and made a face. “I can’t read that! He tried to sound out a word and giggled. Mom, that book is weird.” Frowning a little, Sara returned the book to the shelf and pulled down the English version.

When they were done, she traded it for the French volume, surreptitiously sliding it under Will’s pillow. See what you make of that, little man, she thought.

* * *

The next morning, Will slipped into the kitchen without a sound, making her jump when she turned to find him already sitting in his place at the counter. “Good morning.” She gave him a kiss on the forehead as she passed by to get the cereal.

“Good morning. S’il vous plaît, dessine-moi un mouton!”

There was a crash from the pantry. Little fruit-flavored Oh’s rolled across the floor in all directions.

* * *

Thinking herself very foolish, Sara nevertheless embarked on a series of experiments. The results were as follows. If she placed a foreign language version of The Little Prince under Will’s pillow, the next morning he claimed to have spoken to the little prince in that language in his dreams. He could even recite the prince’s first words—his plea for a drawing of a sheep—in the new language. She tried German, Hebrew, and, just to be sure, Cantonese. But Will grew bored with this approach. He seemed to be reliving the same scene each night, just in a different language. So she put the English version under his pillow for three nights in a row. And in the morning, over pancakes and syrup, bacon and eggs, bagels and cream cheese, he amazed her with his recounting of the story. His visits with the little prince did not necessarily track the order of scenes in the book. Sometimes he told her things that happened much later.

And the things he said! These were not a child’s made-up tales upon studying the illustrations in a book. He knew, for example, that the prince’s rose was not only beautiful, but that she was a little selfish. That the prince loved her, but that he also wanted to be free from her. “That’s why he left his planet, mommy,” Will explained, “And the rose knew, she knew that it was her fault that he wanted to go away. And she told him to go, because she could tell that something bad was going to happen. But you know what I think?”

“What baby?” Sara was leaning close to him over the counter, practically spellbound.

“I think the rose really wants the little prince to come back to her. But sometimes you have to let go of something to keep it.”

Tears sprung up in Sara’s eyes. “That’s true baby, that’s very true.” She blinked, thinking how silly she was being, and turned to clean up the mess from breakfast.

To round out her experiments, Sara one night slid the book out from under Will’s pillow, careful not to wake him. She stood in the doorway watching him sleep, then looked at the book for a long time. Instead of putting it back on the shelf, she placed it under her own pillow.

The next day was Saturday. No alarm clock. Will came bursting into her bedroom, distraught. “Mommy, mommy, I was talking to the little prince, just like always, and then, all of a sudden, he was gone! And it was just dark and quiet. I kept calling him, but he wouldn’t answer. And when I woke up, mommy, the book, was gone.”

Sara smiled, a little sadly, and drew the book out from her own pillow. Will gasped. Then a thought registered. “Mommy, did it work! Did you meet the little prince?”

“No baby, it didn’t work.” Incredibly, Sara felt a little sob grip her. It was ridiculous, but some part of her had actually believed that something magical was happening. And maybe something magical was happening. But it was a child’s magic. And she was a grown-up.

That night, after they had read her favorite scene, the one with the little fox who wished only to be tamed, Sara handed Will the Italian translation, her favorite, because of the beautiful illustration on the cover. “This was the first Little Prince I ever bought,” she told him. The English version had belonged to her mother. She placed the book under Will’s pillow and gave him a big, squeezy hug.

“Mommy? Will you sit with me until I fall asleep?” Sara looked at him. She didn’t typically go in for such things. They were usually just ploys to delay bedtime. But Will looked so serious.

“Are you scared, honey?” She remembered him studying the drawing of the first King the little prince came upon, after leaving his planet. The depiction—deliciously awkward, like all of the book’s illustrations—showed him as a severe-jawed man with a flowing star-spangled cloak. Rather intimidating, she had to admit.

“No. I just want you to sit with me. Just for a minute.”

“Okay, sure.” Sara dimmed the lights and sat on the edge of Will’s bed. She watched his long eyelashes flutter in the moonlight. Suddenly sleepy, Sara stretched out on the bed next to him. Will nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck and, just before they both drifted off, she twined her fingers through his and gave his hand a little squeeze.

* * *

Sara woke with a start, disoriented. She lay stiffly, uncovered, on the edge of Will’s bed. He was awake too, staring into her eyes, their hands still clasped together. She narrowed her eyes at him, questioningly, and he seemed to answer her, without saying a word, excitement lighting up his face.

At the same moment, they both bolted upright and shouted, “Se per favore, disegnami una pecora!” Sara yanked the book from underneath the pillow, held it in front of her triumphantly, and joined her son in a fit of giggles, until they were both rolling on the floor, tears in their eyes.

[Day 5: 2327 words]

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StoryADay May – Day 4 – 40-Minute Story

Wow writers, it was not as easy to write a 100-word story as I thought! I was really inspired by some of the short, short stories at 100wordstory.org. Some of them, like “Row,” by Charmaine Wilkerson and “First Run” by William O’Sullivan, really blur the lines between storytelling and prose poetry.

If you are ever feeling completely stumped by a prompt (like I was with this one) you can try this trick: find a nice big print dictionary, open it randomly to a page, and put your finger on a word without looking and try to use the word in your first sentence. My word was “Samara,” and I wound up making that my title too. Once I write a line or two, the words usually start flowing.

Adhering to a word-count limitation like this is one kind of arbitrary constraint we can impose on our writing. See my post from last month about how constraints like this actually boost our creativity. Today’s prompt imposes another type of constraint: a time limit. Happy writing and Happy Friday!

Day 4 Prompt: “Write a story in 40 minutes. Spend 10 minutes brainstorming and starting the story, 20 minutes complicating your character’s life, and the final 10 minutes reviewing what you’ve written, making notes and writing an ending.”