Nine days in. Today's prompt was about a character's desire. No idea came to me, so I picked another character from my work-in-progress and explored his childhood. I can't help but wonder what I'm going to do with this manuscript when it is done. It won't be done for a while yet, but if I …
Today's Story-a-Day May prompt was conflict. While I think I put some conflict in my stories, I never start with a conflict in mind. I start all my stories with an image in my head, and then I ask myself questions about that image until I find the conflict. So, starting with a conflict didn't …
I'm not committed to following the Story-a-Day prompts, but so far each prompt has given me an idea. Todays' prompt is about stealing from yourself. The idea is to go back and revisit a story you've told before. So, I've gone back to my first published short story. This ins't strictly true. I had a …
Today's Story-a-Day May prompt asked us to steal something--a character, a world, a plot. Something from another fictional world and to have fun with it. Since this is fan fiction, I can't have it published elsewhere or anything like that, so I'll just post the entire piece here. Coincidentally, I finished reading Jonathan Strange & …
Today's prompt was to write for 40 minutes, but I had seveal interruptions when I started and soon lost rack of how much time I spent writing. In any event, I went to an established character and went into her past. Here is a snippet of that. Tas was the only one not to watch …
The prompt for Story-a-Day today was to write a 100 word story. I don't always follow the prompts, but after yesterdays very long, about-to-get-out-of-control story, the idea of a very short story appealed. Another Day on the Job Ben Chiselsmith navigated his ship into position. He sipped his tea, reviewed the orders. Everything was clear …
The beginning of today's story--Mr. Dimwater's Graveyard School. The bodies arrived before lunch. Fourteen-year-old Sofie Hartmore slammed her book shut and threw her pencil hard across the room. It barely missed Tobin Yu, who had just lifted himself up off the floor. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ignored the clatter of Sofie’s …
Story-a-Day May has begun! I need to be more thoughtful about what I post since many magazines and journals won't publish anything that's been posted on a blog or other website. Nonetheless, I can post snippets, right? So, I took the start of today's story and made a short vide using a free video-making platform. …
Whenever I took one of those magazine, personality quizzes (pre-internet days), I always ended up in the middle, never too much this way or that. As a kid, I believed being a judge was the most important job in the world--you decided what was fair. You balanced the needs of society and the individual. If …
I've been in something of a reflective mood. Or maybe obsessive. The line between the two wobbles a bit for me. What I've been dwelling on is failure. There's what for me is a common failure--art. For every piece of art I show people, several pieces are in the trash. I experience varying degrees of …
Marta Bacon 