Last week participating in the very popular #vss365 challenge on Twitter. The aim, to write a daily Very Short Story in less than 280 characters, a single tweet. Yes, that’s characters! Not words.
The prompts themselves are seemingly random single words, the whim of this month’s challenge setter. This month’s mathematical themed fun was organised by @49JDBlood. I’ve taken some liberties with formatting simply because WordPress is not Twitter and to make it easier to read.
This is my last #vss365 post having reached the big 365. I’ve enjoyed writing them and reading the other contributors over the last year. Without a doubt, this tiny format has helped me hone my writing efficiency. Even if getting the most out of a couple of lines felt like Sudoku on some days. A big shout out to the friendly and talented #vss365 community. Some of the most thought-provoking and moving words I’ve read this year have been packed into these tweets. Having a different prompt setter every month has ensured a wide variety of words and I’m not ashamed to say a good number of them were new to me. Overall, as a writing exercise, it’s been very beneficial and I’d highly recommend it to any writer of any skill level. That said, given where I am now, the daily context switching has increasingly been a bit of a distraction from other writing efforts. So now feels like the perfect time to draw a line under it.
This week’s photo is of the first veg from the raised beds we put in this year. It’s a meagre but very tasty effort. There is something to be said for growing your own. It’s certainly the first time my eyes have watered cutting an onion for many a year. Which got me to searching. Have onions been watered down so to speak? There were certainly articles in 2003 and again in 2015 where some supermarkets (Tesco and Asda) were marketing “no-tear” onion varieties. Anyway, I digress, let’s just say the homegrown onions were full-on in flavour.
In the news this week, the prime minister has switched from claiming getting back to school and work was a moral duty to declaring it a patriotic duty. Clearly an example of more levelling up, at least of rhetoric. I have no problem with the message, the science backs the fact the virus (for now) is mostly under control. My issue is the desperate dumbing down of this data into bombastic sound bites, with all the political noise that inevitably ensues.
Writing this week has been very edit-heavy again. This time for two submissions that have already been accepted into anthologies. Returning to something I’d written three to four months ago I inevitably discover I’m not happy with it. In part, because I never am and in part, because my writing skills have improved. I managed to finish a new 3k sci-fi story for an upcoming anthology I’d been invited too – details shortly. I also had a couple more drabbles accepted into Eerie River’s Dark Magic anthology (3/5).
Enjoy these last three tiny-tales 😉
“Did you think you could hide?” said the bounty hunter, levelling a plaz pistol across the table.
Zak knocked back his whiskey and grinned. “Well, yeah. It’s a big universe.”
“I’d find you in #infinity, my friend. Now, pay up!”
“Or?”
A plasma bolt melted the shot glass.
Fuel exhausted, the #Fractal Voyager floated dead in space somewhere along the spiral arm of the Mandelbrot nebula. The crew had lost their bearings in the spectacular multi-coloured dust. Now, with the oxygen supply failing every gas cloud looked like every other.
Tuesday 1st September – Archaeological
The #archaeological dig had turned up an oddity. Amongst the bones and broken urns, something glinted, something out of time and place. With trembling fingers, the student reached down. “Professor! Professor!”
“What you got?” asked the Professor, “Oh, my watch. Thanks.”
