Short blog post for you this week, detailing a short look at a very short story. A 10-word story, to be exact.
The Assingment
I’m a member of The Alliance of Independent Authors, an organization that just celebrated its 10-year anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, they hosted a 10-word story competition. Considering my short attention span, this sounded appealing. So, I got to work.
The Process
You’d think writing 10 words would be easy, but I found it harder than writing 10,000 times that number (I would know—that’s the length of my upcoming book.) Here are a few of my attempts:
She thought it was seaweed—until it grabbed and pulled.
The advertisements bemoaning the vaccine for advertisements regrettably didn’t work.
“I dreamed you were dead.”
“I’m not dead.”
“Okay, phew.”
As you can see, these ranged from iffy to downright horrendous. Writing a story with 10 words is like constructing a house with 10 materials, or painting a mural with 10 brushstrokes.
Finally, after about 10 duds, I wrote this:
Procrastinate. Tweet. Daydream. Delete. Behold, a paragraph! Break time. Repeat.
I called it “Portrait of a Writer at Work”—not that I liked it much, either. I kept writing, kept failing, and when the deadline loomed, I scrolled through my failures and decided the story above was the best I could do. I sent it, and evidently, someone like it.
The Result
My piece cracked the contest’s top 10! Alas, I didn’t win, but that’s quite alright. It was exhilarating to hear my name called on a livestream.
Hope you enjoyed the final product. Maybe I’ll write more in the future…
Kyle A. Massa is a comic fantasy author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include two books and several short stories. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking coffee.
