For better or for worse, I’ve decided to start up the 50 Story Project again. If you feel this is a bad idea, blame Charlotte Cuevas… not only did she encourage me to start up again, she is considering doing something similar when she’s finished with her project to write 365 poems in a year. I can’t quite let a fellow writer and friend do two things that I’ve always wanted to do, before I do them, so that became the final push I needed. It also helps that I’m in a awkward spot with my two long form writing projects… a novella series and a new longer novel… and according to WebMD, the best prescription for what they amazingly didn’t diagnose as a tumor is: More writing.
In preparation for this, I’ve been reading a lot of short-short stories. After the novella, I feel this may be my favourite form of fiction. An early, formative book for me was the Scholastic anthology Best Short Shorts, which taught me that even though I loved the complex worlds to be found in Terry Brooks’s and Tolkien’s books, it was entirely possible to create an entire world in a page or three. Add in later experiences with O. Henry and Isaac Asimov, and the well- crafted, near poetic short-short story was something that constantly bubbled up from the drain in the little room that my Muse writes in.
Over the next few days, until I publish my first of 52 stories for this project, I will link to my favourite short- shorts that I can find online. If you have any favourites, send me a link.
Up on deck today: the inimitable Donald Barthelme with his story “The School.” I can’t recommend enough his anthology Sixty Stories. He was definitely a master of this difficult yet entertaining form.
