Bonus 1 - Starting

This is not a story as such, it is more of an introduction cum extended author’s note.  What follows is a collection of 70 stories, all about 700 words long, and I thought you, my beloved reader, might be interested in knowing a bit about how it came about. 

One of the questions I get asked most as a writer is, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’.  And my usual answer is, ‘I don’t get them; they get me!’.

The following 70 stories all ‘got’ me.  Some of them are thought experiments, some are flights of fancy.  Most have some element, maybe a twist ending or a play on words, that I hope will make you go, ‘Oh!’ and want to read them again.

I cannot really answer the question, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’, but I can tell you something about my writing process, which may be more helpful.

All of these stories feature a word ending in ‘-ing’ as their title.  Where this is used as a verb or adverb, it is usually referred to as the ‘present participle’.  A bonus grammar lesson for you!  For each story, I began with the word and just let it roll around my head, seeing what it bumped into and what other ideas got attached to it.  Sometimes, this resulted in a very clear idea of what the story was about, and it was just a case of writing it.  On other occasions, it really did not get me anywhere at all!

In those cases, all I could do was write.  This may seem like a strange thing to say.  How can I write when I do not know what I am writing about?  Well, I invite you to try it.  Pick a word, any word, and start writing.  I am one of those insufferable people who has never been troubled by writer’s block, and I believe this is part of the reason.  That does not mean I have never struggled to write, but the best solution I find is to just make some words on a page and the story (or report or minutes) appears as if by magic.

I also exercise a certain amount of discipline in terms of when and where I write.  Every morning before I get out of bed, I write.  Sometimes I have a whole hour, sometimes it is only fifteen minutes, but I do my very best to get some words out.  It is not always possible, and I forgive myself when it does not, but that small part of the day is my ‘writing time’.  Discipline has made it a habit and the day feels a bit weird if I have not produced at least a sentence.

And now, why are these stories 700 words long?  Back in 2013 (wow! I had not realised it was that long ago...) I wrote a story called ‘Blood’ for Shotgun Honey (Google ‘shotgun honey blood’ and it should appear).  One of the restrictions Shotgun Honey apply for stories is that they should be 700 words long and I found this to be a good length for me.  I can write about 1,000 words in an hour when the juices are really flowing, so it is possible for me to write a full story in one sitting (please note my comments above about time!).  On the other hand, creating something with a beginning, middle and end in just 700 words can be a challenge – but produces something very tight with no room for distracting frills or flourishes.

However, some of the stories that follow are more vignettes, tiny windows into a much larger tale.  I hope you will find them intriguing rather than frustrating!

The idea for writing 70 stories has two sources.  One is the Biblical quote about forgiving 70 times 70.  The other is that 70 times 700 is 49,000, which is almost the length of a National Novel Writing Month novel (50,000 words written in 30 days).  This project has stretched over about six years all told but it is finally nearing its end.

I hope you enjoy these tiny stories.  Even more, I hope they inspire you to try writing for yourself.