Stories

I remember being afraid as I walked along the gravel road with my dad. We were going to see a dead person. I was ten years old. I had never seen a dead person before.

Monday was always wash day. Vera’s forehead glistened with sweat as she fed the heavy wet cotton sheets and pillowcases through the wringer-rollers. Her mother had proudly purchased the Maytag washing machine in 1929 from Sears, Roebuck and Company. Now it was more than twenty years old and Vera was ready to get rid of […]

It turns out that writing a six-word story is challenging. Here are four that I wrote.
Clearly I haven’t mastered the concept yet, as none of the four made the cut for publication in a literary magazine. Writing a six-word sentence or a six-word slogan is pretty easy. But to invoke motion and emotion in six words is not easy. I’ll keep trying 🙂

These three short essays are based on real events from my life. I discovered it is not easy (for me, anyway) to write in the first person. After this, I think I will stick to writing fiction.

I wanted to write an interior story. So, most of this story takes place inside the head of the protagonist. Also, except for the mention of a deceased actress, only the non-human characters have names.

“Potted” is a short story I wrote one afternoon when I was visiting New York City.

One day when I was grocery shopping, I overheard two stock clerks in the produce section talking about their mothers. I heard one of them say, “I call my mom Betty, ‘cuz that’s her name.” And thus this short story was born.   

I gave myself the challenge of writing a one-sentence short story.  Here is what I came up with.

I originally wrote this short story to submit to a fiction contest.
Although my story was not chosen as a finalist, writing it was a fun and challenging exercise.