  Short Stories
This week: Finding your Muse in the Museum Edited by: Legerdemain  
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The purpose of this newsletter is to help the Writing.com short story author hone their craft and improve their skills. Along with that I would like to inform, advocate, and create new, fresh ideas for the short story author. Write to me if you have an idea you would like presented.
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Finding your Muse at the Museum
Have you ever noticed the first four letters in museum is...MUSE? The etemology of the word museum is from Latin. Museum - place for learned occupation, from Greek Mouseion, from neuter of Mouseios of the Muses, from Mousa.
Museums can be a great place for inspiration. I know, your idea of a museum might be visions of moldering dusty catacombs, but art can be inspiring if you open your mind to it. After all, something inspired the artist to create, so why not allow the artist to inspire you?
Why not try a little morsel of inspiration each day? The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a featured work of art of the day and if you decide to click "Learn more about this work of art" you'll get a bit of the history of the work. For those of you that enjoy art, it's a chance to see a work that may not be on exhibit.
If you're not a traveler, visiting museums on the internet can be very inspirational. Getty Museum has a delightful interactive website. Clicking Explore Art can help you find any medium that wakes your muse.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the The Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim located in New York City was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Their online collections are a bit harder to find, you have to click Collections, then find Browse and Search and go from there.
On the odd side, The Neon Museum could be a fun place to visit and find ideas. The Mutter Museum has a funky virtual tour. And for real down-to-Earth inspiration, you could visit the World's Largest Ball of Twine. Yes, there really is one. It's in Darwin, Minnesota. You can find all kinds of odd places to visit at Roadside America which is a fun website to surf.
I hope your muse enjoys this little trip. Let me know if you come up with a story, I'd love to read it. |
|  | Angels (18+)
David Navaro finds excitement with his angels 1st place Balance of Chaos Contest
#1634368 by Jaguaress  |
Excerpt: David paused. He could have the equipment there within the hour. He did the mental calculations in an instant… gravity, horizontal and vertical acceleration, lift and drag coefficients, with safety factor, without safety factor. He looked out over the park, picking possible landing sites. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing they had ever done.
Excerpt: Corporal Jake Carter stared out at the bleak landscape of Western Europe from the turret of an old M-60 tank. The winter winds whipped past his space suited body as he scanned the horizon for any sign of the enemy. There was no one out here. The fanatics of the Children of the One were not showing their faces today. No one ever showed their face anymore in this bleak wasteland. Everyone stayed in their respective bio domes where they were safe from the radiation.
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#1670187 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: “I do therapy with androids. I counsel them. You know sometimes when their empathy protocols make them a little too sad. Or they become so emotional that they can’t function in their jobs. Just like you would with a human.”
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#1117251 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I clenched my hands together to keep from digging deeper into my flesh. Hard to hold back when I could feel it in there, relentless with their polite requests. I'd tried making it angry or withholding the sensory input altogether, but I couldn't stay awake and hungry all the time, and the devices didn't experience emotions themselves. When I ate, it was satiated. When I slept, it took over. A constant feed back to the main computer, which analyzed the trillions of sensory bits I experience every single moment. Someday they'll crack the code.
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#1640425 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I pay off the house, retire after forty years at the factory, and then look forward to enjoying the good life. And what do I get? There aren't any rewards, only the fight against time. And when my time comes, near the end and I’m bedridden, like old Henry next door, the kids will cart me off to a nursing home. I’ll die in sterile sheets with white bars surrounding me to keep me from falling out of bed and breaking a hip.
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#1671389 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Facing the white dragon that had ravaged the village of Nordston where he'd been born and raised, Yates Sourenson wondered at his own foolishness in the dank and smelly cave. All this to save his tiny baby brother, Martin who he'd held in his arms only hours ago. Enabled by the wizard's magic then a brief jaunt back through time, he now stood in the monster's presence
Excerpt: “The minions are at their work. All appears normal,” he said, turning toward the interior. “How is our master controller this morning?”
The woman in the sturdy, white linen smock looked up from her cupped palms where figures and diagrams displayed in three-dimensional space. “He is dying,” she answered.
Excerpt: She was the one: the one he must protect. It was Elijah's duty to encourage Clara away from the temptations of sin. Yet, his approach with her was different. Most he would befriend and that would be his way into their lives, but she had been more difficult to approach. His route instead, consisted of her brother.
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#1391235 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: The bean counter began the arduous task of logging out from the secure link. He entered the authorization code. An oddity flashing across the screen gave him pause. His pinky paused over the final key. The Harris account dwindled before his eyes. Twenty million dollars in virtual assets trickled to nineteen million, eighteen and three quarters, seventeen-
Fighting the bile rising within, he reached for the digital phone, and found no signal when pressed to his ear. Undaunted, he reached for the I-Phone attached to the hip. The signal bar flashed, indicating the lack of one.
Excerpt: I've read and critiqued so many short stories by beginning authors that I decided to summarize some of my reflections on the craft of short fiction. Every author will find their own voice, and not every lesson I've struggled to learn will apply equally to every story or to every author. In real life, I'm a mathematician. Proving theorems is hard work, too, just like writing, but at least mathematics proceeds from agreed-upon axioms and follows a logical set of rules. Writing is an art, not a science, and doesn't follow rigid, logical rules.
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This month's question: Where do you find your inspiration? Answer at the bottom of the page! 
Last month's newsletter was about the Bermuda Triangle. I asked the question: "Have you ever taken a small idea and spun it into a story? What inspired you?" Here are some responses:
scribbler : There's no such thing as a small idea.
Angelica- Happy May 5th!  : On TV, it described as to how an Airplane that took off in Florida into the Bermuda Triangle and in 3 minutes... WAY above the airplane's max speed... That airplane ended up in New York or something. If traveling by land: it'd have taken 3-4 hours. Hmm... That might explain the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Keep on writing on these great newsletters
drifter46: "What if,,," one of my favorite expressions. What if it's not what goes into your teens room that disappears. What if it's YOU who vanishes from the house and simply can't get back into that room.
Alien abduction? Rogue wind? Some form of mind control from the teen? Makes you wonder doesn't it?
J. A. Buxton  : It wasn't an idea as much as a word that started me on the way to writing the third novel in my "Home of the" trilogy. Near the end of 2007, "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week" gave us a prompt to use the word "akimbo" in a story. That afternoon, the first line in Home of the White Dolphin began in this way:
Mitchell Whiting stood on the rolling deck of the White Dolphin, muscular arms akimbo, staring out at the raging sea.
Over 104,000 words and 170 chapters later, I finished the story that began with a one-word contest prompt.
Zeke : Daydreams are great inspirations, but don't forget about night dreams. I keep a note book on my night stand to note dreams I've had. ~Zeke
DRSmith : Y'know Lege, your newsie about playing the "what if" game may have been short, but one of far more impact than one might think. Aside from inducing good themes, riveting plots, and biting irony in short stories, I believe entire captivating novels can be born. IE: "what if" an unrelated incident unearthed a million+ year-old lab proven to be of advanced alien origin and found to be manipulating DNA strains of earth's indigenous species... we learn humanoids were actually genetically altered transplants; the missing link? Wouldn't that toss a curve to established theories of science and evolution, let alone cause turmoil within world religions, and so on? The "What if" game can go on an on as a superb source of inspired material. Well done.
Nomar Knight : Thanks for exploring the "what if" scenario with the Bermuda Triangle and some of the mysteries surrounding the region. Your newsletter fed the muse some much needed ammunition. Thank you.
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Short Stories: May 12, 2010 Issue [#3727]
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