Very Short Stories
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1: - Relationships
Chapter 2: - Family
Chapter 3: - Life
Chapter 4: - Sex
Chapter 5: - Work
Chapter 6: - Death
Chapter 7: - Other Worlds
About the Author
Copyright Page
Dedication
For my monkeys. When you’re older you can read this.
Each word I write drops a little more of me onto the page. In time, I will be the book, the book will be me, and the story will be told.
Introduction
This book started as an experiment on Twitter. I’ve heard people talk about writer’s block but never really believed in it. I wanted to find out for myself if I could run out of ideas. If I wrote down all of the stories I could think of, would more ideas arrive to fill the void?
So far the answer has been yes.
I’ve written over 700 of these bite-size stories so far, and more arrive in my mind each time I sit down to write. There have been a few times when the next story did not turn up on schedule, and I wondered if I was done. At these moments, I had a couple of tricks I used to keep the ideas flowing.
Trick #1 — I asked my followers on Twitter to send me a noun for inspiration. The nouns that inspired me I used in a story. I like this trick a lot. I learned it teaching and performing improv comedy, where we often ask the audience for a suggestion to inspire a scene. My favorite thing about this trick is that it makes the writing a collaborative process.
There are so many stories in this collection that I would never have written if I had not received a noun from a reader. I’ve found that by collaborating creatively with others, we can go some place together that neither one of us would have gone alone.
There is an important part to this trick. I do not use suggestions that do not inspire me. It’s the same when I perform improv comedy. I ask the audience for several suggestions and look at the faces of my fellow performers to see when a suggestion inspires them. It’s easy to tell — their faces light up when they are inspired. When I see that, I know we’re ready to create.
Trick #2 — Be willing to write a bad story. I think this is the place that most people experience what they call writer’s block. It has to do with judging the results as we’re creating them. If you judge as you create, then you start to edit yourself before you have a chance to express the thoughts. This can lead to creative paralysis. My improv comedy training has freed me from this burden. I know that sometimes the work I produce will be good, sometimes it will be so-so, and on some occasions the special magic will happen and it will be spectacular. So instead of wondering whether the current story will be any good, I just keep writing. Sometimes when a story is done and I don’t feel it’s one of my best, I send it out into the world anyway. This reminds me not to be attached to the results, keeps me humble, and makes way for the next story to arrive.