As Previously Promised...

...Here is the link to Nutshells, the website I was blogging about in my last post. Definitely worth checking out, should you have a moment! Awesomely enough, you really only need a minute or two, since the premise of the site is to collect memoirs of 100 words or less. So check it out, and if you're interested in entering your own, or voting on those currently entered (I'm in 4th place as of now!), or both writing and voting, contact me and I'll get you the code you need to participate. Also, for those of you who are teachers, the site's creator, my lovely and talented friend Rachel, has accompanying lesson plans.

Also, in my attempt to describe Nutshells in my last post, I labeled the post Flash Fiction, which is just plain idiotic, since anyone who knows anything remotely literary understands that memoirs are, in fact, non-fiction.

But, I digress.

At any rate, should you head over to the site, I think you will be impressed by the diversity of topics and the amazing feats writers are doing in capturing their lives in 100 words or less.

That's all for now, folks!

Oh, snap, I forgot to brag.

I finished my first 10 Mile Race (Time Kennard 10 Mile River Run) a little over a week ago, crossing the finish line in one hour, thirty-six minutes, and twenty-five seconds.

I'd write more about that, but my legs are still sore.

(Just kidding).

I'd write more about it, but I'm tired, and that's not a very fast time anyway, but for a first race, it's decent enough that I thought it was worth mentioning.

Maybe a year from now I can detail my attempts at a marathon over on Nutshells?

Or maybe a marathon is a BIT too ambitious for the time being...

Flash Fiction (A Drabble?)

So an awesome friend of mine set up a great website in which she challenges members to write memoir style story in 100 words or less. This site isn't completely live yet, but when (if?) it opens to the public, I'll post the link. In the meantime, I thought I'd share the piece I wrote. I'm not sure what the technical term for this kind of writing is. "Flash fiction" is a term used in creative writing to describe extremely brief fiction, but definitions vary as to just what the specifications are. A "Drabble" seems to be a work of exactly 100 words, which my piece is... but drabbles, according to the googling I just ever so studiously conducted, tend to deal primarily with the science fiction genre.

So, I don't know what this is. I'm also still contemplating a title.

But it's 100 words. Unless "finger tips" should really be one word. Then I've got room to squeeze in one more adjective somewhere.

Here it is, my memoirish/flash fiction/drabble (dunno if I like the word drabble):


I look down at her, this precious bundle nestled against me, soft pink velvet of her blanket comforting my finger tips.

I look up, blinking away the hot tears that flow down. Smiling at, because, and in spite of this moment.

The beginning and the end. These priceless few minutes. The time that I hold her.

The first time I hold her is also the last time I hold her.

When they take her away, my heart will break.

Hello is also goodbye.

But goodbye is not forever. I hand you to the nurse.

I miss you already, my daughter.

How Do I Love Thee?

How is it that I, an English teacher and writer, fell in love with a man who calls an apostrophe "that floating comma"?

I gotta admit, I'm fascinated with the idea of falling in love. Like it's an accident. Uncontrollable. "Falling." Painful, unplanned... remembering a fall down someone's steps a couple month's ago--quick!

I suppose that in many ways, the attraction I have for the one I love has been like those emotions associated with "falling." But attraction in itself is such an odd process! Why we click with certain people and not others? How the most unlikely person in the room might be the one you fit with just right?

Interesting stuff, is all I'm saying. And no, I'm not a stuck-up language snob, or even a member of the grammar police (for the most part)... but when I read that text the other day, I laughed so hard I almost cried.

The context was we were arguing over the function on your phone that keys words out for you. Because his phone spells out "ain't" for him, my dear one maintains that "ain't" is a word. When I suggested his phone typed it in there for him because he once texted it and his phone memorized it, his reply was: "No. It types that floating comma in there too."

And if that wasn't bad enough, added, "with all it's supper powers."

One of my students? I would have thrown up my hands. Or maybe sent a few erasers flying across the room.

But in this situation, all I can do is smile. And appreciate how the people we care most about in our lives can fit so unexpectedly into those funny moments that give us an opportunity to see how truly different we are.