Christmas Time is Here!

And that means excessive amounts of food, sugary desserts, cold weather, frosted cars and of course, a familial gathering in the home of my forefathers....which translates to Mom n Dad's house.

So I'll be leaving you all, my little bloggy minions, for several days. Not that you are terribly concerned, I'm sure, because I have this awful habit of not writing on a consistent basis. Well, nuts to me for failing to be consistent. Unless, I'm merely being consistently inconsistent! Ha! Take THAT!!

But in all seriousness, if you are reading this now, I am wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Jolly Boxing Day, if that's what you're in to. Hopefully I will have a Christmas gift for all of you followers when I return, but we shall have to see what I can whip up in a timely fashion. Or a fashioably late time, whichever comes first.

May your days be Merry and Bright, and may all you Christmases be...All Right!

(Snow me no likey...)

-S.

Micro Stories: Finished

A bit late in the game, I suppose, but whatever.

I don't know if the whole micro story idea was a success or not. I'm leaning on not, since I only wrote less than a handful of them on the backs of blank receipts from work. It's amazing what you can do when there are no customers around to interrupt your train of thought.

However, I did realize one thing: I like writing out on those stupid little slips of paper. I don't know why. Somehow, I feel like I can accomplish a lot more on them than with just typing it out on my computer.

So for the past two weeks now or so I've been using said reciepts to work on some other story ideas I've had kicking around in the back of my skull since...God, I don't even know since when...School, maybe? New Hampshire? I don't know. Anyway, there you go. I've successfully worked out a basic pantheon for a fantasy world involved in one story, successfully killed off the hero in another story (this is a good thing; trust me) and also fleshed out a character in a short-ish story I messed about with for a bit.

Who knows? Maybe one or two of these idle themes will yield a novel. And then that novel might sell. And then I might be rich!

But, for now, I've rediscovered writing by hand.

-S.

Micro Story #4

This one is a bit more compicated. I didn't actually finish it until I posted it here, so, hope it doesn't suck too badly!

"And then what happened?" asked the little boy to his father, who was unprepared for this remark.

"Well, and then they had children, who grew up and had children and so on." The boy's eyes went wide in wonder.

"Forever and ever?" he asked.

The Father considered this. "Yes," he said finally. "I suppose they did."

The boy's face grew puzzled. "But what happened after that?"

The Father felt very put upon by this point. But it was then that he realized that the boy had no notion of Eternity. The word meant nothing to a child whose whole life is lived so quickly. Eiternity only matters once you see what the end of the line looks like. "Son," said the Father, "Forever is a really, really long time. It's the longest time you can possibly think of."

The boy thought for a moment. "So it's like waiting for the Dentist to finish cleaning my teeth?"

The Father chuckled, but agreed.

Emboldened by this the boy continued. "Or like when we're sitting in Church and the preist is saying the closing prayer and he won't say 'Amen'?"

The Father laughed loudly at this and nodded agreement.

Feeling daring, the boy pressed on. "Or like when you and Mommy are in your room and-"

"Son!" said the Father, cutting the child off at the pass. "There are somethings that are meant to take a long time. And some things that you should not repeat. Ever. To anyone. Especially people. Or me. Or Mommy. Ever." The father's blush began to subside slowly.

The boy looked thoughtful again. "You mean, forever?"

THE END

So what'd you think? Too much? Not enough? I don't know. And what I was trying to go for was that the child heard the parents arguing about something rather embarrassing but since children have no concept of embarrassment, the boy brings it up as a frame of reference. I leave the topic of that argument to you.

Oooh! Post creative ideas in the Comments Section! I like that plan!

-S.

Micro Story #3

So I'm not sure how frequently I'll be writing these things. Last week at work was ridiculous and after work was pretty busy as well. Between all that, I couldn't write as much as I would have liekd to and the couple of things I did manage to crank out weren't exactly what I was looking for. But oh well. Here's something from the past week. Enjoy!

As I went alking of an afternoon, I saw a woman with a curious hat. it was perched on head at a precisely fashionable angle and was riveted in place by no less than three silver pins. It was black silk, with a white dove stitched to the side of it. Around the brim a small garland of bright red roses seemed to be growing out of it even as I watched her read a book.

"Excuse me," I said as I passed her. "But that hat is quite remarkable."

She looked up from her book, stared me in the eye and said something unprepossessing in Portuguese. It was then that I realized that she was reading an English to Portuguese dictionary and that I had probably made myself look a great fool. In a flash of inspiration, I bowed to her and said the only Portuguese I knew.

And that is how I met your Mother.

It's not exactly what I set out to do, but at least I had fun describing the hat. Can you imagine what the outfit she must have been wearing looked like? What would be accentuated by a black silk hat with a white dove and red roses on it, fixed in place by silver pins? Is she from the late 19th century? It almost feels like that.

Oh well. Live and Learn, I suppose.

-S.

Micro Story #2

This one is a bit more like a story and a bit less like a prologue...Enjoy!

Once there was a land in which the Sun never set. This was a tragedy for the people of this land slept by day and feasted by night.

One day, a clever young man woke up and closed his eyes against the burning Sun. The young man woke his friends, who exclaimed the wonder of his discovery. However, the young man's Mother - who was not born yesterday, rolled over in her sleep and said to him, "Get back to bed, Son. For the Light will surely blind you in its terribly bright and blinding glory."

But the youth stood firm, for he knew his plan would work this time. "Momma," he said, "the light won't blind you if you close you're eyes to it and pretend it does not exist."

And so the people of the land of the Unsetting Sun became blind, for they shut their eyes and saw not that the sun had set and the feast could begin.

It's deep. Like Sicilian style pizza. I hadn't even intended it to be deep. I was hoping for dryly amusing.

-S.

Micro Story #1

Twice upon a time the Sun rose in the West.

Each time, it royally f&$^ed with the weather. All manner of human failings were blamed on the bizarre astronomical occurance. Key scientific instruments failed. Oceans rose when they ought have fallen. The Moon rotated ninety degrees to the right in the sky. Mountains fell, light poles snapped, brassieres twanged and cats & dogs leapt into the sky so far that when they came back down again they fell as hailstones to the earth.

Oh, and most of humanity was destroyed. Both times.

The End!

It's not very good, but cut me a little slack I wrote this on the back of a receipt at work in the space of about twenty minutes.

Story #1: Completed. Enjoy at your own risk!

-S.

Attention! Important News Update! !!!!!

Becuase everyone needs excessive exclamations marks. "Why," do you ask? Well, mostly because the more exclamation marks there are, the more important the news update is. EVERYONE knows THAT! ^_^

Anyways, it's actually not that terribly important, but I totally psyched you out there for sec, didn't I? Ha! Called it!

Back to the issue at hand. Or foot. No, hand. Well, hands really. I won't be doing NaNoWriMo this year. I know, I'm bummed out too. Last year's novel was a success -- meaning I just finished it on time -- but this year, without a computer to write on, there won't be time to write a full fledged novel.

Instead, I think that I will write a few micro stories to work on my arc technique for plot lines. They will be short, sweet and to the point and I already have two written. First one will be up shortly after this post right here, so pay attention to this space for further developments.

Perhaps they will be catalogued for later use by some strange story historian in the future when the intrwebz dies...

-S.