I’ve been on an interesting part of my creative journey lately. My reading and writing hasn’t been very high in volume lately, outside of work. But trust me, I have been creating. And I mean that in the literal sense. I’ve taken up junk journaling (or glue booking, or smash booking- what you call it is based on what you put in it or how you create it- but it matters not). I spend a lot of time looking through materials others would think of as junk. An old tattered book I bought for a dollar at the Goodwill store, deconstructed cardboard boxes from various household items that are over packaged by the manufacturers, leftover papers, stickers, and knickknacks from my scrapbooking days almost twenty years ago... and some already read old magazines piled for the trash.
I love flipping through the old magazines, not for the articles or stories, but for whatever else speaks to me. Beautiful words in striking font, images that I couldn’t possibly draw or create myself but which make me feel inspired. This is what I was doing this morning; curating “junk” from magazines for use later on. It’s kind of like picking off the last of the meat from a carcass before you dump the bones in the trash. And I just happened to pick up a Poets & Writers from March 2016. This might be the last time I actually had a subscription to a physical magazine. And I happened to have two copies of the same one, the second one was in a a pile of a couple of magazines from my friend, Helen, who often gives me a couple when she’s finished with them.
“The Time is Now” appeared on page 35 of this issue from just this time of year, 5 years ago. This is the magazine’s offering of writing prompts to the reader. There were three; poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and I like all three. But one of them combines just perfectly with an idea that was already brewing. So, after that long and self-indulgent introduction, here is this month’s prompt:
I had been thinking about how people say, “I could tell you a million stories...” We actually tell stories everyday. Think about how you recount your day with your cohabitants, or about dinner or drinks with your friends, which is usually a round robin of storytelling. Think about a collection of brief stories you could tell around a single topic. Maybe typical childhood accidents or injuries (stitches, falling off the trampoline, a broken arm). Or three different job interviews. Or three touching stories about a loved one. Start by brainstorming topics or ideas for a small collection, and jot down some ideas. (This is the idea I had brewing).
Here is where my idea blends with the one from Poets & Writers. The magazine had an explanation of a set of 8 short story vending machines placed by a publisher around the southeast of France. The idea was that passers by could select one, three, or five minutes of fiction to read while commuting. The community submitted six hundred stories that would dispense on receipt-like paper out of the machines at no cost to the reader. (How cool is that?) Try writing a story that can be read in one minute, then one in three minutes, and one in five minutes. Think about the story collection ideas you brainstormed, and use them to try the 1, 3, and 5 minute collection. Fiction, nonfiction, makes no difference. After all, if you don’t tell us what’s fiction and what’s not, how would we know?
