M Artwork by Zane Dickens
Hello Microcosmonauts!
You know what, I think I like Currently Untitled.
It speaks to the process, having something in the works that we're not quite sure how to package.
Well, at least it's better than Rocky Shores' suggestion of "Smillew's Home for Unwed Stories."
I tried your trick there, Smillew, but could only get you hooked on H. Sorry!
I don't listen to my own advice
I said start small. So I did with a 100 words. But then I made it a 100 stories in a 100 days. Because fuck it who needs an easy life.
Anyway you can read up, follow along or join in too.
I know Smillew is too 🐔 but Paul’s game check out: The Mind Swirls.
If you do, use the tag "100 Story Challenge" and tag a friend as well.
I got Kristen, to write this beauty: Blowing on the Wind.
Nothing like a little friendly competition.
You did say "Challenge Accepted" to be here after all. 😉
Keep writing.
Keep having fun.
Our Recent Prompts:
Last one for the month coming tomorrow!
Weekly Prompt: The One About the Long Looming Threat Not Yet Delivered
3 Stories That Deserve More Reads
Hidden Letters by Jacinta Palmer (new writer!)
Thank you all the writers that choose to support Microcosm by grabbing us a coffee or becoming a member. Your support means the world to us! 🎉
Welcome to January’s New Writers 🎉
Tamila McDonald, Aj Bhardwaj, P. L. Goaway, Η Πράσινη Νεράιδα, Jacinta Palmer, Tom K. F. Leonora Solomon, Talbot Finch, Karen Toralba, Emaline Foust, Marty Shambles, C. Chou, Isaac Kaaren, Ellie Brooke, Scott Younkin, Heather C Holmes, Patricia Ray.
Thank you for accepting the challenge — I’m looking forward to your stories and featuring them in this newsletter.
Learnt while editing: What is a Vignette?
Sometimes a draft comes in that gets you thinking, and googling.
In composition, a vignette is a verbal sketch — a brief essay or story or any carefully crafted short work of prose. Sometimes called a slice of life.
Here's my favourite example, by Hemingway on a Matador’s Death
“Maera lay still, his head on his arms, his face in the sand. He felt warm and sticky from the bleeding. Each time he felt the horn coming. Sometimes the bull only bumped him with his head. Once the horn went all the way through him and he felt it go into the sand. Some one had the bull by the tail. They were swearing at him and flopping the cape in his face. Then the bull was gone. Some men picked Maera up and started to run with him toward the barriers through the gate out the passageway around under the grandstand to the infirmary. They laid Maera down on a cot and one of the men went out for the doctor. The others stood around. The doctor came running from the corral where he had been sewing up picador horses. He had to stop and wash his hands. There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand overhead. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was dead.”
(Ernest Hemingway, Chapter 14 of In Our Time. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925)