  Short Stories
This week: Dust Edited by: Legerdemain  
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Dust
Someone said something to me this week and it has been stuck in my mind like a little sliver, just festering and pestering my creative side. They reminded me that dust is fine particles of everything around us. And everything not so close by. It blows all around the Earth on the wind. So that little dust bunny under your bed could have particles of earth from the other side of the planet. Okay? Is it sticking with you yet?
I started Googling. Yes, I know. Google is your frienemy. You learn all kinds of things not necessarily factual. Facts are important if you're writing a thesis or something technical, but if you're just looking for fodder for a story...it might not matter so much. Dust just happens to be my current creative tickle. The New Yorker had an article that made the tickle feel more like an itchy rash and by the time I was done reading, I knew I was onto something for a story.
Okay, I like weird stuff. It's not that I don't like the typical mystery or romance, but hey...dust is awesome. The article is about tests done on swabs of dust around forty homes, in nine places in each home. The results are really interesting. I learned more about people and bacteria than I really wanted to know. And made me want to dust my whole house. And spray it. And burn it, I'm pretty sure. In any case, the silliness of the idea ended up with some fun results that I'm pretty sure will end up in a story quite soon.
Simple stuff, like dust, can inspire us. Write on!
This month's question: What silly thing inspired one of your stories? Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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#2110336 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: With both hands, he pushed the handles down. The whirring of the pumps and their vibrations through the floor gave their final valedictions until stillness took hold. His hands remained on the handles. His chest heaved like he'd just finished a marathon, and his mind remained twisted from reacting to the emergency. How much got out? Those chemicals can't reach the outside. If they did, there's gonna be hell to pay.
Excerpt: Some of us tried to fight it, but really, we were doomed from the start. Too many embraced the new "cure-all" additive and others just didn't care enough to help us stop it. After all, it's just a shake into the batter here and a sprinkling on a pizza there -- what harm could it do, given all the perks?
The silvery dust tasted like heaven and went with anything you could think to put it on or in.
Excerpt: As soon as they entered the kitchen, they discovered the source of the awful odor. Lying on the floor near the open refrigerator was a pile of dirty gray ashes. The powdery gray ashes were in the form of a burned human body.
Excerpt: It didn’t matter that she sat undiscovered. The smells were back. Summer’s rich roses just outside the side windows, now kept cracked to keep a fresh breeze flowing through. Autumn’s delights of fresh-harvested fruit, apples and cherries from the orchard, pumpkins and berries from the gardens. Laughter every day.
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Excerpt: The dust under the monitor was really piling up. She had just cleaned the dirty stuff up a week ago and here it was again…thick as ever. The cleaning crew must think she left it there hoping they’d clean it up. With a swipe of her hand, she sent the particles flying every which way.
Excerpt: Evening spawns night. A heavy blackness falls. Zombies walk, their tread the beat of Indian tom-toms or the slow monotony of a beating heart – a particular body part that zombies inhumanely lack.
Excerpt: He strode purposely down the dusty street. He was on a mission to kill a man today. Sure, he had killed men before but they weren’t men who amounted to much. Horse thieves, murders, robbers all the bottom of the barrel. But the man he had to kill today was his friend.
Excerpt: On the day of the fire, I locked my bike up to the house close so that nobody would steal it, but also because Dad told me that he would take it away if I just propped it up against the side of the house again. It was windy that day and the tire was low. I almost fell off of the bike three times on the way back from school that afternoon. It was so bad that when I got to the caliches trail that sprouted off of the County Road, I had to walk it the half mile to our house. The sky was orange grey; a color you’ve seen but can’t describe.
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This month's question: What silly thing inspired one of your stories? Send in your answer below! Editors love feedback!
Last month's question: Have you managed to refurbish a story? What were your methods?
TheWalkerInMe  replied: I always bring back stories that I'd written in the past. The novel that I'm working on currently is an old one that I'm very much trying to bring back from the grave of writing!
Quick-Quill  responded: I wrote a novel based on a true story. I'm trying to get back to rewriting it, but I'm struggling with it.
werden  answered: Several years ago, I started working on a story idea I had in my head on a whim. Now, I have about 8 books written (very rough drafts) and now in the process of polishing the first book.
Good newsletter.... thanks for sharing
dragonwoman sent: My goal for 2017 is to finish as many of my UFS's as possible. I will post them as I do for a month. One I finished is "Invalid Item" that can be found in my port in file Stories over 300 words.
spintronic admits: I have yet to finish a story, but I create outlines for stories and iterate through them all to see what I can do to build them up. Maybe one of them will be completed eventually.
Thank you for your replies, it's nice to see people read my newsletter and sent responses, it's much appreciated! |
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Short Stories: March 08, 2017 Issue [#8165]
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