Short Stories

Over the last few years, writing poetry has been my primary creative outlet, but that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I focused more on writing short stories, with dreams of seeing them published in prestigious magazines like GQ, The Atlantic, and Granta. This was back when I was running The Final Carrot, an online writing group I founded in the late 90s. I’d set weekly writing assignments, with submissions being posted online. One of the goals was to create a nurturing environment for growth and creativity, so members were encouraged to provide both supportive feedback and…

As I’ve been cleaning up and categorizing my written work (poetry, short stories, personal histories, and assorted essays), I sometimes come across something that I want to brush the dust off, and share more widely. One technique that I’ve successfully used to overcome writer’s block is to open up a favorite book at a random page, and use the last full sentence at the bottom of the page as a jumping off point for a short story or poem. A variant of that has been to use a snippet of song lyrics, and I think that this is where this…

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself writing more poetry than short stories. That wasn’t always the case, but increasingly, I find that when I put fingers to keyboard, it’s poetry that comes out. When I used to run The Final Carrot (an online writer’s collective that I cofounded around 20 years ago), there was one technique I’d sometimes use to overcome writer’s block, and that was to open up a favorite novel at a random page, and take the last sentence as a starting point for something new. The following short story was seeded with a random sentence…

“A howling wind that blows the litter as the rain flows As street lamps pour orange colored shapes through your windows A broken soul, stares from a pair of watering eyes Uncertain emotions force an uncertain smile” Uncertain Smile, The The Each day, he was there. If it wasn’t in the morning when she pulled back her drapes, it was later in the evening; either when she checked that all of the doors were securely locked, or as she closed the drapes before finally getting into bed. It had been almost a week since Carol had first learned of his…

The little girl looked to her father and then looked back at the treasures spread out in front of her; the well-thumbed storybooks… each battered and well-worn item held its own story and its own place as part of the bond that held the girl and her father together.

The sudden noise of a weighty package hitting the linoleum brought Mavis Butterworth rushing out of the kitchen into the hallway… Ever since she’d read that newspaper advertisement which she’d hastily completed, clipped and mailed before she could change her mind.