Microfiction, or, You Should Write

Last month some friends of mine participated in Inktober, where you follow a one-word prompt to create a drawing for each day of October. It's like NaNoWriMo for artists. I was delighted each day to see the drawings they posted, no matter how dashed off or sketchy, all far above the level of anything I could do in the artistic line.

NaNoWriMo is about long-term sustained creativity in the writing department: 50,000 words in one month. It's all kinds of fun, but it's just too much work to do casually. But just as my Inktobering friends made small drawings each day, so other friends have turned their hands at casual microfiction, dashing off a story here and there. I like this -- the idea that drawing, or storywriting, is not some rarified skill left to the professionals, but something that a person ought to be able to do in their spare time, just for fun.

So today, some microfiction excerpts, published with permission.

***

My friend Janelle Ortega took on a fun task: describing how she would introduce people in a novel. Here's what she wrote for me, on St. Crispin's Day.

Even with so many people it was cold. It was late October. Some would have thought to bring sweaters but most wouldn't have. Burning dust floated out of the vents as it always does the first time at the beginning.

Usually the smell bothered her but not tonight. She was dealing with her stomach.

That stupid quote.... "I still get butterflies but now they fly in unison" came to her head. She could practice til her voice faded, perform nightly, get continuous standing ovations, but still she was nervous. There were those who called themselves "thespians" hundreds, thousands, and each one of them claimed "I'm never myself unless I'm on stage" Bah, Cat knew that lie, heard it since high school. No, for her, being someone else was why it was all so exhilarating. But still, those nerves. Even between acts, even playing multiple roles....

But now clothes so damp in the crisp air. Her socks thin, she can feel the seams in her boots. Smelling the early morning fires and rotting leaves, a different fear strangles her and she turns to the king....

"Oh that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work today"
That he might have something to ease the fear of death. Speak oh King!"

***

Inspired by a conversation about my oldest daughter, who unlike her parents yearns to be a gamer, a friend who runs a game night sat down and wrote up this tale.

An Exercise in Justifying My Hobby as a Dungeon Master, or
What To Do When Your Daughter Wants to Fight Dragons
by Jeff Kinney
-----
The tiny bell jingled as he opened the door.

He really wasn't sure what he was doing there. He'd outgrown such things years ago, but he did have a vague recollection of where to go, what to search for. And the shop looked promising.

Bookshelves lined the store. Some were the standard metal ones, but further in were a hodge-podge of wooden ones, some even boardering on antique. They were laid out in parallel sets, exposing their wares in a mostly organized fashion. The spines of hardbound books, boxed sets of games, cards and dice, figurines and statues.

He walked in cautiously, not seeing anyone else in the shop. A voice rang out from the back, suggesting that the proprietor would be out shortly. He moved toward the shelves and ran his fingers lightly over the covers. The Player's Guidebook. Guide for Dungeon Crawlers. Monsters Compendium, Volumes I through V. Another set was fully devoted to that popular sci-fi show that came out a few years ago. He smiled ruefully. Not much seemed to have changed.

A man with a considerable gut, balding at the top but clearly compensating for it with a bushy beard, came out of what was likely the store room.

"Sorry. Would you believe how often I have to go back there and fight off the Rat King and his subjects?" the shopkeep said with a grin. "So, what can I help you find?"

"Not for me. My daughter, actually. She wants a game to play, but I hate to see her staring at a screen all the time. Something cooperative, maybe, for her and her friends. I was hoping I could find her something here."

The shopkeep sized him up, then smiled again. "How long has it been?"

"Excuse me? How long since what?"

"Since you played! I can see it in you. You've been to far off worlds of your own making. You've conjured up fantasies through forbidden lands that only you and your friends knew of. Or was it an exploration of space, filled with aliens and robots and blasters? Aha. That was it, isn't it."

"Guilty" he said sheepishly. "And it was many years ago. My mid teens, I guess."

"Yeah, pretty much everyone feels awkward about then. Always easier to believe yourself to be a badass warrior or a hidden magical talent, or a superhero in disguised as a normal kid. So, what's the girl into, other than escaping reality."

He shrugged. "Theater. Reading. Talking with friends and hanging out."

The shopkeep grunts and takes you back into the shelves. You find more books like those in the front. On the shelves a marker had inscribed 'Role Playing Materials' over a swath of masking tape, but it was the mural above it that caught his eye. A child, reading a book under a blanket by flashlight, while above her, a charging warrior raced toward a bellowing monster. Below the image, a message was written in flowing script:

"Dragons are not real. But they can be defeated."

He looked up, bemused. "Chesterton?"

The shopkeep nodded. "Horrible bastardization of it, but I couldn't get the kid who painted it for me to write the whole thing up there. But it gets the point across."

He nodded. A moment later, a few well-worn books were being stacked up in his outstreched hands. "What are these?"

The shopkeep huffed, pulling himself from the floor with effort. "The basics. Enough to get her going. You'll know soon enough what kind of adventures she wants. Come back and we'll get her proper things if it sticks. Those are loaners, so try to not write in them too much."

He was taken aback. "Free?"

"Well, if you want I can get you the newest versions at $40-$50 a book. But unless you learn how to make the game an adventure, they'll likely sit next to the cleats she outgrew when she was eight and wanted to play softball."

"Dance shoes, actually" he murmured, still a little off balance by the man's instincts.

"Sure, sure." He pulled out a small bag from the counter, and put in a half dozen dice from a collection of hundreds. "I'll charge you for these though. Kids always lose the dice. $3.48 plus tax?"

"Um. Yeah." He was struggling to regain control of the situation. He felt like he had been swept up in something without even realizing what was going on. "Seriously, why are you doing this? This can't make you much money."

"Nope, it doesn't." The shopkeep pulls out a box of flashy foil covered playing cards. "These pieces of cardboard keep me afloat. I do the games because I love seeing kids tell stories about how awesome they are. If it works, yeah, she'll come back and buy dice, or books, or miniatures. Or she'll make up her own stuff. But there will be stories. Stories of her and her friends saving the town from ravaging monsters, exploring the haunted mines, or discovering some brand new magic. She'll tell those stories, legends of her own making. She'll stop pretending the be the warrior-princess and act like it. And if it worked for you, it'll probably work for her too. I assume it DID work, yes?"

He nodded and paid for the dice, though he did not following the shopkeepr's logic. As he walked to the door, the shopkeeper called out again.

"Let her know gaming nights are Thursdays! And you're welcome at the table too!"

He walked out, slightly unsure of what had just happened, ringing the bell on the way out. As he laid the books on the passenger seat of his car, a pamphlet fell out from between the books.

'What To Do When Your Daughter Wants to Fight Dragons'

He smiled. Yes, this might do just fine.

***

And a contribution from myself, an Orphan Opening from last January.

Of course everyone was more secretive because it was Christmas time, and everywhere the echo of muffled giggles and running feet hinted at mysterious doings afoot. Children disappeared into rooms and slammed doors as Marie hauled laundry or half-unpacked boxes up stairs and through corridors. Somehow nine children seemed like a lot more when they rambled around a huge old house than when they were all jammed in the small living room of the unlamented heap they used to call home. At least the kids had been easier to count then. Now it was impossible to tell who was who between all the mops of curly tangles disappearing with packages into empty rooms. Empty rooms! Such a novel concept before, but in this house, there were plenty of places for a child to hide away.

Up in the attic, Marie didn't dare search through the opened boxes for the Christmas decorations lest she disturb someone's cleverly hidden present cache. Still, there were plenty of sealed boxes up there to go through, stacked amid the detritus of previous homeowners: magazines, records, dress-up clothes, books, and even a photograph of the original family to live here. The stiff sepia-toned parents were slightly too blurry for Marie to feel that they looked on her in judgment, but the young girl stared clear-eyed at the mess, ringlets carefully arrayed over her dark dress.

"Never saw this much chaos in your life, huh, kid?" Marie muttered, and then felt bad at the thought of one child rattling around in this pile, between the great rooms downstairs and the small servants' bedrooms on the third floor. Well, the old place had life aplenty now. Three middle girls in three separate bedrooms, wrapping, though at a glance who could say which one was Rachel, Melanie, or Nell? A quick peek in the nursery revealed two little boys who were either Pete and Joe, or Joe and Pat, or Pat and Pete crouched over some legos. A teenager reading huddled under a blanket in the living room -- was it shaggy John or shingled Mary Alice? And then the kids had met the neighbors and were always vanishing next door and then popping in again with friends in tow, leaving Marie with the disconcerting feeling of there being at once too many and not enough children underfoot. At least the baby was always easy to track: small, attached to someone's hip, and definitely bald.

At last the tree was up, the house was decorated (thanks to the kids), and the presents were stacked, but Marie felt even less settled in the house than when they'd first moved. She never thought she'd miss having no personal space, but now the only time everyone was gathered in one place, all accounted for, was at dinner time. At least in the old house she'd had some kind of sense of where everyone was at any given moment. Now children could isolate themselves, someone always sneaking off alone to throw off her mental headcount. Even Dan confessed himself defeated, laughing on Saturday afternoon as he tried to tally his children in the confusion of rooms and neighbors.

"Be grateful," he told Marie as he kissed her in the kitchen. "This is a great neighborhood. I think I saw one of the neighbor kids behaving nicely in the library when our own were upstairs shrieking in the bedrooms."

Marie wondered how her house must sound to the other mothers on the street.

At least on Christmas Day, the noise and fighting were confined to the family. Presents had been opened and abandoned, dinner was made, the kids had set the table, and Marie even took a few moments upstairs to put on a fresh sweater and some lipstick before entering the fray. The dining room resounded as kids jockeyed for coveted positions. There must have been fighting, for in the twilit living room Nell, or Melanie, or Rachel sat with her back to the world, contemplating the glowing tree and refusing to budge. "Grant us peace," Marie sighed as she opened the dining room doors. A burst of Christmas cheer greeted her, and everyone sorted into their spots. At the head of the table opposite her, Dan; four tousled heads down each side; and in the high chair, sweet bald baby, leaving Marie standing by the one empty chair, her own, stifling the summons she'd been about to give to the small ringleted presence still behind her in the living room.

***

You don't have to be A Writer to write fiction. You don't have to want to be published. You don't need to write a novel. Fiction writing is a skill, sure, but it doesn't have to be rarified. Just sit down and write a thing. And share it with me -- I want to read it.