Mood
There's a storm coming.
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent congratulations following the announcement of my novel receiving offer of publication!
I’m so excited to share the novel with you and am grateful for your continued support throughout the process.
After the excitement of last week’s post how about we slow the pace a little with another short story?
It’s a piece of literary taxidermy inspired by the following sentence from Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes.
The hot summer night was lit by flashes of sheet lightning, threatening rain, and the air was oppressive with dust, density and motor fumes.
Which led to me write this…
Hattie ran for cover under the creaking boughs of the ancient elm, her slippered feet kicking up yellowed puffs of dust. As her knees met with the scorched earth, she clasped her blood spattered hands together and began to pray.
‘Please God, forgive me, I didn’t know what else to do, please forgive me, please.’
She felt the blood begin to congeal as she tightened her grip. Occasionally intercepted by the lowing of an unmilked cow, a sound of sirens travelled across the flat land of her grandmother’s farm. Hattie swallowed hard and repeated her prayer.
‘Please forgive me.’
Writing short stories was one of the ways I kept things flowing during the sometimes loooooooooooooooooooong wait between competition announcements and submission outcomes.
<If you’d like to hear this story aloud, you can find it on YouTube.>
Short stories are ideal for getting the ‘reps’ in on things like:
Structure.
Clarity.
Character.
They can also be a great approach to writing larger pieces i.e. treating each chapter like a short story.
This can hone your focus as the writer, support keeping your reader engaged and remove the sense of overwhelm that can appear if you think about the enormity of writing a whole frickin’ novel(!)…
What I love about short stories is the opportunity to play around with ideas.
<Remember - not everything you write has to be for someone else to read>
So why not go and have a play?
And see what happens when you keep it short…