52 Short Stories or Why Do I Do This to Myself?

You can get this sticker on ETSY.

Ray Bradbury, among many other writers, suggests short stories as an excellent way to practice one's writing.  

"The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week - it doesn't matter what the quality is to start, but at least you're practicing and at the ens of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can't be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that's just wonderful." - An Evening with Ray Bradbury

He may know a thing or two as he published over 600 short stories and 30 books, among other works. 

Basically, he's saying write every day. He wrote a minimum of 1,000 every day since the age of 12.

I need constraints and goals to function and be productive. Without them, there are just too many choices, and I dream my life away.

I did this in 2021 and wrote 17 short stories using the Reedsy prompts. You can find them all HERE.

REEDSY has great weekly prompts. They'll even send them to your email to make it easier on you. You can submit them to their site for free or enter their contest to win prize money. 

So, here's my SMART goals related to short stories:

SPECIFIC - I will write a new short story a week.

MEASURABLE - A new idea, once a week, between 1,000 and 3,000 words in length.

ACHIEVABLE - I've done it before, so I can do it again. And it's not to perfection., it's to done.

RELEVANT - This speaks to writing each day and my purpose of getting things out of my head and on paper.

TIME - The completion date for each story is the end of the day on Friday.

Writerly Birthday Haul

 

My 65th birthday was on October 2nd. 

My birthday cake:

Strawberry Whipped Cream Jello Angel Food Cake

Above, you can see my writerly-related gifts.

A metal road sign

Favorite Seashell Chocolates

My Freewrite Traveler

Two new stickers

Anti-Writer's Block Dice

Earrings from the cover of my first book

The specialty items were found on Etsy

I am well pleased.

And here's a fun little video of them all.

"Changes" - Self Portrait

"Changes" - Self Portrait - Vanessa Victoria Kilmer 20231003
Metallic Acrylic Pouring Paint on Strathmore Mixed Media Paper 184#
9" x 12", done without cleaning the brush or letting it dry between colors

  In his art class this semester, 

my grandson was studying the portraits done by 

the contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley, 

the man who painted the official portrait of 

President Barrack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

His signature style involves the use of repetitive patterns

 in the backgrounds of his portraits.

Whenever my grandson has an art piece to do, 

we do the assignment together. 

It's rather challenging for him because he is colorblind 

and that frustrates him immensely.

So part of what I try to show him 

is adjusting for these things.

I have dyslexia and dysnomia,

only discovered when I was in my thirties.

I learned my own ways to compensate for both

from the moment I became interested in books at the age of two,

Rabbit, Rabbit October 2023 - The Big Six Five

A Wrinkle In Time - hamming it up

My grandson is an actor. In order to support him, my daughter and I are also acting in the local stage production of A Wrinkle In Time with him.

My daughter and grandson are on stage every night of the production. I'm on a few nights.

If you are in the Jacksonville area, come see us.

You can get your tickets HERE.