Hot on the heels (well, a year on the heels) of 'My Wife and I', comes 'My Daughter and I', a story I started in America in February 2004, failed to finish (it's not easy writing a hundred words in one sitting), forgot about, and promptly rediscovered in a drawer eleven months later.
I went to Colchester Zoo yesterday, hoping to mooch around the pygmy hippos and meet a nice girl. Instead, all I got my hands on was a reindeer with a broken antler. Even the fat-tailed sheep shunned me. I think it may have made me cynical about love.
My pal Lisa commented that my micro fiction often gives her a sense of doom, even though ultimately things turn around at the conclusion. I therefore felt it was my duty to write a piece which, for a change, lacked any sense of foreboding. So this one's for you Lisa.
I went for a walk late at night through the mean streets of Shotley Gate. I'd written this in my head by the time I got home.
I originally wrote this as a 25 word story for the Espresso Stories website, before deciding it would benefit from the expansion to 100 words. So here's the 'long' version.
It was Friday the 13th last week, which was when I wrote this in my head. For various reasons it took me another 7 days to get these 100 words down on paper. But some things are worth waiting for. And some things clearly aren't.
I wrote this to go inside a Father's Day card. If you don't know my Dad, it may not mean much. If you do, you'll probably want to sue me for calling this fiction.
I was asked to write a story about pigs. Ten minutes later I had this. I'm not sure it was what the person had in mind.
I'd been awaiting delivery of a new wardrobe all week. I think it affected my mind.
A touching love story. I might send it to Mills & Boon.
A literal interpretation of an old metaphor. Or maybe two old metaphors.
You've heard of stand up comedy, well this is stand up writing. I didn't even bother to sit down for this one. I think I was impatient to go and do the washing up.
Composed mentally at 2am in a state of semi-sleep, and written the following morning in a matter of minutes, this was my first foray into the world of micro fiction.
These are short stories. Very short stories. First there was 'flash fiction' - the idea of writing a complete story in just a few hundred words. 'Micro fiction' takes the concept one stage further. The challenge here is to write a piece containing all the elements of a traditional short story - a setting, one or more characters, conflict, resolution - all in 100 words or less.
And to think some people write novels. The fools.
Two years on from my last foray into the world of micro fiction (I've been busy, ok?), I was prompted to pick up my pen again by a short story competition on BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme. Rules stated that each story must be exactly one hundred words (no more and, somewhat significantly, no less), and should contain the following six words, chosen at random by, of all people, film director David Lynch:
Bacon, Bodies, Experiments, Fire, Paper & Organic
Which left only 94 to write myself. Meaning I had time to enter twice. I didn't win, probably due to the BBC's fear of my revolutionary ideas on Shakespeare, and the fact that I couldn't spell papier mâché.
