29.2.08

my muse is a precocious little girl

I feel like I always jabber about being a writer, and writing, and blah blah blah so I should just stop being a pansy and post some writing. Don't worry — you'll never come here and find full drafts of short stories. Just some snippets I've written here and there.

So, in that spirit, today while writing with some friends, I was challenging myself to be brief. Here are two short-short stories, in less than 100 words.

Eloise sat in the basement room and began to unravel the rug again. She had woven and unraveled the same red, black and white fibers more times than there are spines on a cactus. If she had woven the same pattern twice, she didn't know. Diamonds, mandalas, chevrons, paisley swirls all emerged from the same beaten, fuzzy threads. The futility of her task may be cause for concern — but probably not.


I have never been any good at spelling. Inappropriate and unwelcome letters crop up in the middle of words where they are uninvited, like the static shock of a doorknob early in the morning. But I can spell onomatopoeia perfectly; strange vowel clusters snared by the siren song of the flypaper in my synapses. That pesky third "n" in begining, or the extravagent "e" in withe, however, manage to escape.


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