You’ve Got 250 Words & 24 Hours… Go!
I’m shitty at being an author. Which is strange considering the plethora of voices in my head. I’ve read a million books on writing, I schedule myself time to write every week (Spoiler alert: I seem to always come up with something else I need to do during that half hour on Thursday nights), and I think about writing constantly.
But then, this voice at the back of my head shows up and whispers ‘you suckkkkkk at this, who do you think you areeeeee?’ And that’s the rub, isn’t it? That I’ve been letting one voice hold so much power over the characters who run through my head with wild abandon.
There are worlds in my brain. But I’ve been letting doubt run the show.
Moving through doubt feels a lot like walking along a wood and wire fence that goes on for miles. It can feel like you aren’t making any progress, until suddenly you turn around and realize you are miles from where you started.
I decided to start looking at that fence line as milestones. As small things I could do to try to have a different conversation with that voice in my head.
Me: Hey, there’s this writing contest on Facebook that’s targeting us.
Voice: Mmmmhmmmmmm. Marketers.
Me: I don’t know what microfiction is, but it sounds fun.
Voice: It sounds like something you don’t do.
Me: Sigh.
I did some research and found this beautiful example by Charlotte Dower of how powerful and visceral a few words can be. While hers was a writer’s prompt, the gist was similar for the contest I entered. I was inspired. So, I paid my $25 and waited. Then I received my first assignment. I had 24 hours and 250 words to complete it. Read on for my entry. I share what my assignment limitations were after it.
Round 1: Shine On
Resting against the old cow’s warm belly, Trina squeezed. A thin stream of milk appeared. There wasn’t much in the pail. “It’s enough,” she patted Jessa. She poured the milk into a Tide bottle. On the barn’s workbench, her phone buzzed with a text.
“Mommmmmmmmmm. Hungry.”
“When aren’t you, Paige?” she typed. Teenagers.
Her screensaver: toddler Paige and her husband Mack eating ice cream.
“Patrol’s out.”
Shit. They were early.
A decade ago, disease had taken down cows by the millions. Then humans. Governments ordered every cow slaughtered. But Mack had hidden Jessa away, convinced it wasn’t the livestock. The smell from the bonfires faded, but the disease ravaged. Soon, all livestock were condemned. The second wave of the virus took Mack. “It’s not the animals,” he coughed.
Trina had raised Paige alone in a world where livestock were illegal, and zoos were filled with holograms. “Shiny sheep, momma!” A world where memories of Mack tasted like ice cream.
Pressing her thumb to the control panel, projections shimmered into place. Jessa’s dusty stall disappeared into endless green fields under a starry sky. Locking the soundproof doors, she threw the Tide bottle into her clothes basket and headed for the house.
A flashlight blinded her.
“Checking on a livestock report.”
“None here,” she shifted the basket.
“Neighbors say you do a lot of laundry.”
“Is that a crime?”
“Heat signature in the barn,” said a voice over the radio.
“We need to invest in safety for all,” he said, raising his gun.
**
What If?
For round one, I was assigned Sci-Fi. My piece had to include the action ‘milking a cow,’ and the word ‘invest.’ Sci-fi answers the question ‘what if?’ I was addicted to Black Mirror for awhile, episodes like White Bear, Hated in the Nation, and The Entire History of You changed how I viewed technology. The series also inspired me to start a short story about the intersection of tech and truth telling (hopefully more on that in a future post!)
Some of the what ifs I considered for my Round One submission were, what if it’s a farm people pay money to go visit, because everything else is gone? What if society was tricked into thinking milk and meat still existed? What if having cows was illegal? What if there was no more ice cream and that’s the last thing your heart remembers about your husband? My entry ended up a bit of a mooshed-together version of the last two what-ifs.
Feedback is Terrifying (But It Isn’t)
I hit enter and waited. And waited. And waiteddddddd. And in that time, I took a second baby step, and I posted my piece to the forums. To every single person who puts something they’ve created out into the world, you have my respect. That shit is hard. Everyone will tell you how they would have done it, or what they didn’t like, or what they did.
But it helped me learn a lesson that I couldn’t put into words until I read Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. That everyone has the right to their own opinion, but that not all of those opinions should matter to you. That YOU get to decide whose opinions matter. And that other people’s opinions of you and your things and the things that bring you joy shouldn’t ever have the power to shake your belief in yourself.
Voice: Well, what did you expect? There was a lot wrong with your story.
Me: Yep, there was. But it was fun to try it.
Voice: Mmmhmmm…
Me: Hey voice, we made it to round two!
Voice: WTF? Really?
Round Two: Shatter
Jack’s bedroom door was cracked open, but Molly still knocked. Fourteen going on twenty, privacy was big to her son. “Okay buddy,” she knocked again. “I’m coming in. Washing every window today. Yours is the last.”
His room was always so neat. The bed made with corners his army staff sergeant father would be proud of. Pulling back the curtains, she smiled at the thought of Jack staring across the fields ablaze in autumn beauty. He was her dreamer.
When he painted everything gray Molly chalked it up to adjusting. Dan and Molly had kept the lawsuit quiet, but people still talked. Hours from the city, the farmhouse was a fresh start. Here, there were fewer whispers and stares. And so far, no fights at school. Dan still got anonymous texts: “your wife’s a liar.” But he had picked her side, always.
“Move on, Mol,” she whispered, soaping the window. She scrubbed at a small stubborn stain with her nail. It wouldn’t give. Leaning closer, she saw it was #metoo etched into the glass. A deep gouge split the word.
“Why did you say anything?” Jack’s angry voice from the doorway.
“Did you do this?” She pointed at the window.
“People say you made it up. That you just wanted money. That that’s how we got this house.”
“Jack, I didn’t…”
“I hate you,” he screamed, running downstairs.
She fell to the floor, her cries not loud enough to drown out the sound of someone shattering window after window.
**
Can We Be Dramatic For A Sec?
I struggggggggled with round two. Genre: Drama. I had to include the action ‘washing a window’ and the word ‘beauty.’ My struggle was with the drama part. Everything I started to write felt weirdly fake or cliché. And in that moment the voice in my head said something different.
Voice: What conflict do you think about the most?
Me: That smart men that I love and respect feel like it should be so easy to speak up when it comes to the Harvey Weinstein’s of the world.
Voice: But?
Me: But they don’t realize what we have to risk to be heard.
Voice: Ready now?
Me: Yep.
I didn’t make it to Round Three, but the feedback from the judges on Shatter was really helpful. They felt I’d tried to put too much into so few words, and they had questions. Did she lie? Didn’t it feel like the action accelerated too fast? Would someone really move because of something like this? I have answers for those questions, but I think every person should read the piece from their own point of view. It may have been too big a topic to tackle in 250 words, but it stretched me as a writer to try.
Rewriting Things
So I’m not shitty at being an author. I just had a strange idea in my head of what one looks like. For some inane reason over the years I’d (apparently) decided that an author was all of the things that I’m not: structured, prolific, published, consistent, brilliant, and many many other things. My inner voice was just playing along to what I was feeding it.
Then my voice met some pretty fantabulous women in a writers group called Coffee & Quills. Life changed. No joke. They are the most authentic, kind, ass-kicking women ever. We spend time every month meeting virtually to talk about the craft of creativity, our struggles, our wins, and life in general. It was exactly what I needed: other people who were willing to talk about how putting yourself out there can feel scary. Women willing to get real about how writing is so much more than the words that end up on the page. I’ve written more since joining that group than I have in a very long time. And I’m less critical about the end product. Because what I love about writing is being with my thoughts, putting them down on paper, rearranging them, and creating things that didn’t exist before.
I’m chasing creativity and kindness with both hands in 2020, and I’ll be sharing my thoughts about those things here. Thanks for reading!
