September Wrapup

 I wrote 117 micro stories in September - 41 for my daily post and 76 prompt stories (total may include 5 #writever prompt stories that I plan to write today to catch up, since I've fallen behind on those).

I am still posting stories that I wrote in July, although sometimes something new strikes me as particularly good and I post it quickly.  Usually I'm right.  ^_^

This month I got my first truly viral story post, I think.  For me anything that garners more than 50 likes is fairly viral, and a couple of stories have racked up well over 100 likes.  But a story I posted on Sept 3 has had 340 likes and 195 boosts, easily the most popular thing I've posted.  I think it got about 12 likes on Hive too, which is pretty big for me there.

And... I was a bit mystified as to why.  It's a story about angelic beings, and one accidentally deletes the world he's been working on, and his backup is old.  It was kind of a silly story to me, one that I waited a long time to post.  Usually I can say:  Oh, this story is about working for exposure, that's why it struck a chord with people.  But this time I can only surmise that a lot of people have feelings about accidentally deleeting something, and maybe the idea of it being a planet was kind of novel.  ^_^

I am still trying to post 1 story a day + a #writever prompt story + a #mastoprompt story, and a #microprompt story if those prompts appear, which they haven't for almost two weeks.  (Four stories a day is a bit much - I'm kind of relieved when I can skip one!  Although I worry about my friend who was posting them.) 

NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I want to work on my long-suffering fanfiction story Nerima All-Stars again.  It will be interesting trying to juggle that with writing micro fiction stories.  I may give up on doing the prompt stories for November.

I also joined Bluesky (@vanellopemint.bsky.social).  They have a 300 character limit, and so most of my micro fiction won't fit that format, but I've figured out that I can post a screen capture of my Mastodon story post, and then copy/paste the entire text of the story into Alt Text for anyone who can't see the image.  That works, so I've been doing that a week and... so far, very little engagement, but I know some of my friends are reading, and some random people come across my stories too.  Mostly I feel like Bluesky is a chance for me to follow the notable people I liked to follow on Twitter, and hopefully when it goes completely public it will become a Twitter killer.  We'll see.  But it's still a corporate site run by people who don't care about you.

Writing Update for the Start of September

 TL;DR version:  I wrote a lot of micro stories in August, and nothing else.

Not Micro Fiction

Before we talk about my micro stories, let's cover everything else I've written or intend to write:

Grandpa Anarchy Stories:  I really haven't written any true (IE non-micro) Grandpa Anarchy stories in over a year.  But I keep thinking I'm about to rewrite the series of stories I was most recently working on, which kind of went off in a bunch of directions and didn't seem to hold together, which is partly why I stopped working on them.  (And note that I have a lot of OTHER unfinished Grandpa Anarchy stories that I intend to finish at some point, but I haven't been working on any of them.)

Fan Fiction:   I have two big fan fiction stories that I intend to finish.  One is a story called The Nerima All-Stars, which is very long and I've never shown to anyone outside of little bits read for my writer's group.  I will probably work on this in November for NaNoWriMo, which is what I've done every November for the last 3+ years and it's still not finished.  My other fan fiction story that I intend to complete, or at least work more on, is Girl's School.  I've published a lot of it on Fanfiction.net and I have an Archive of Our Own account which I will eventually republish to... but nothing's there at the moment, and I'm focused on finishing Nerima All-Stars before I get back to Girl's School.

Everything Else:  I do indeed have some "other" stories that fall outside of fan fiction or my Grandpa Anarchy universe stuff.  I published 3-4 of these stories many years ago on a story site that I don't even remember the name of anymore.  It's amazing that I even finished 3 or 4 stories, because many of these are written without a plot in mind and wind up being weird fantasy stories that go nowhere.  Some of them are, in fact, just ideas, barely fleshed out, and some of them predate any of my other writing, outside of the Elfquest fan fiction and Tai-Pan stories I used to write.

However!  I recently reread one of these stories titled "Lavender" for no good reason, and I'd kind of like to flesh it out and finish it and maybe publish it to AOOO or even publish on Amazon.  Maybe I will?

And that reminded me that about a year ago I was plotting just such a story for possible Amazon publication.  I spent more than a month working out the details of this story, and you know what?  I never even wrote the basic idea down.  So goodbye to that story idea, I've forgotten most of it by now.

 

Micro Fiction

I published 1 micro story a day for August, to Mastodon, Hive, and Tumblr.  I've managed this for four months now, so that's something.  I have a lot of followers and fellow writers on Mastodon, and I have a very small number of dedicated followers on Hive, and I have maybe 1-4 followers on Tumblr, which is weird because I find more writers on Tumblr (I haven't found any other writers on Hive) but that doesn't translate into people on Tumblr leaving likes, or any sign they've noticed you.

In August I managed to publish every micro story that I had written in May or June (which I had not already published).

I wrote 38 new micro stories in August (not counting prompt stories).  I felt like I'd fallen off the pace, and it's true that I wrote 50 of them in July, but hey, still more than 1 per day so I think I'm doing all right.

I also wrote 92 prompt micro stories in August.  These are almost entirely based on prompts from the tag #mastoprompt (one a day, published by Tanweer Dar), the tag #microprompt (published most days by Faerie) and the #writever group, a group of French short fiction writers who also publish their monthly list of prompt words in English.  There is an English bot Writever Jenny, and a French counterpart named Writever Bob, and I only just noticed that these are controlled by Albert Aribaud who is the writer from that group that I follow the most.  He does at least one #writever and usually one #microprompt story per day.

I also set out to write a second #writever story every day of the month based on the Aug 2022 prompt list that I'd found, but I gave up on that idea after a week, because I was already writing 3 extra stories most nights (on top of at least 1 non-prompt story per day) and trying to shoehorn in a 5th story every day was kind of insane.

Just Me Rambling About Finishing Stories for August

Sometimes I jot down a micro fiction idea and I save it as a story file, and then it's in my file of completed stories even though I haven't actually written it yet.

I had four of these last night.  Given that it was the last day of August, I really wanted to complete them.  I have a file folder for all of the stories I wrote in May and June (all since published) and I had a file for July and August, so I was ready to start a new file for September and October.  But I felt like all my stories in the July/August file really should be finished stories.

So last night I set about to finish these.

One story, saved as "bad things" had been around for ten days.  This was a partial discussion on the idea that in fairy tales bad things happen to bad people, and good things to good people.  I knew there was a story to be built around that (mostly refuting the idea) but I hadn't managed to come up with it yet.  So I fiddled with it for a bit, and produced what passed for a story.

Another was titled "cute".  This was an idea from  the day before, "an ogress who likes cute things".  I was thinking about an anime character, Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh.  She's tall, beautiful, athletic, and all her classmates see her as this super cool girl, but secretly she loves cute things and she's afraid what people will think if they find out.  I thought, surely you can up the ante on that basic concept by making the protagonist an ogre or giant or something.

So I managed to turn that into some sort of story as well.

I had an idea I'd jotted down just a few hours earlier, "lawn ornaments", which was this:  what if a wizard had hundreds of lawn ornaments, but they were all actually golems?  I managed a story out of that as well.

Lastly, I had a file titled "small god" which was mostly just the phrase, "if your god fears words then he is a small god indeed."  I... still haven't turned that into an actual story.  :P  So I have one story file from August left to finish.

Recurring Characters in My Micro Stories

I've been writing micro stories since May 1st of this year, and inevitably I've developed some recurring characters.  In fact, it's become a bit confusing to keep track of what I know about a couple of these characters, so I decided to track down every story related to each character or group of characters and write down what I know.  And why not blog about it!  *gasp* Two blog posts on consecutive days?  The horror!

Medea the Sorceress

Without question, this is the set of characters that I've reused the most.  I've written 33 micro stories involving Medea the Sorceress and her unnamed raven familiar.  So far we know that Medea is a powerful and rather famous sorceress who dwells in a sort-of European village set in the past (perhaps Renaissance more than Medieval, or perhaps even early modern/age of discovery.  Of course, she lives in a world of magic, but she also lives in the same world (albeit in their past) as the Super Friend Squad, my hero team (see below).  Medea is a practical sorceress, is addicted to coffee, likes good pizza and sometimes has it delivered from modern-day New York (so we can assume this world is mostly like ours, apart from the magic and superhero stuff).  Her raven makes the coffee and answers the door, and little else.  She has recently brought a brass raven to life, and perhaps a brass parrot as well.  She is friends with a lich named Gygax who only wants to be left alone to read.

Stories:

Raven 052423

Clickbait 052423

Story Pill 060323

Pigmancy 060523

Resurrection 061723

(writever) Amphora 062023

(micro) Wings of Freedom 062323

Exposure 062623

Patsy's Pizza 062723

(writever) Responsibility 070823

(masto) belt 070923

(micro) familiar 071323

Coffee Story 071523

Imagination 071523

For the Birds 072523

(masto) charm 072523

(writever) management 072523

A Visit From Death 073023

Death Fairy 073023

Wise Owl 073023

(micro) Animate 080423

Brass Raven 080623

Selkie's Lament 080623

Worship 080623

(masto) Delay 080623

(writever) Algorithm 080623

Desire to Read 080723

Fairy Godmother 080723

(masto) Doll 080823

Fearocious 080823

Out of This World 080923

(writever) Generate 081123

Witch Burning 081523

The Superior Friend Squad

Most of my stories involving the Superior Friend Squad revolve around Meteor Lass and Mister Chronos.  Meteor Lass can summon meteors from the sky.  She has a master's in Forensic Science which she almost never gets to use, and her skin tone is mocha.  Mister Chronos can travel through time, a skill that he abuses liberally.  He's also the pilot for the team (their craft is the Friend Ship), and has recently learned to travel to other dimensions.  His power comes from a magic medallion around his neck that was gifted to him by Medea the sorceress.  Other members of the group are Kid Atomic and the Amazon of Atlantis.  Their enemies include Doctor Cobalt, who dwells on Death Skull Island and has a talking monkey minion named Nix.  Another enemy of theirs is known as Empire Cranium.

Back in  Time 050823

Trapped in Time 051223

Drunk in Time 051223

Big Reveal 052023

Fish Nazis 052123

One Trick 052123

AITA 060223

Bloom and Doom 060723

Volcano Theme  062523

(prompt) Boring Machine 062923

Jump the Shark 070623

Discombobulated  072523

(writever) transition 072623

Time Travel Party  072923

(micro) Describe 081123

(masto) Meteor 081323

(micro) Skylight 081423

Grandpa Anarchy

I've been writing Grandpa Anarchy stories since the mid 2000's, although mostly in the last 13 years.  I've written over 350 stories involving the world's oldest hero, so I could go on about him at length, but basically he's been a hero since the early 20th century, is mostly a brawler, his costume is a grey suit with an anarchy symbol on the left breast and a hat (sometimes he wears a domino mask and/or gloves).  He's had a bajillion different sidekicks, he tends to have a new one every story, or at least he did until I got tired of coming up with new ones.  Many of his former sidekicks are now heroes themselves.  His favorite breakfast is strawberry pancakes, and he's in a supergroup known as the New League of Two-Fisted Justice.  His key traits are that he is virtually unkillable (or rather, never stays dead) and he's been doing this for so long that he sees the tropes coming from a mile away.  I have written only a few micro stories involving Grandpa, but I'm likely to write more.

quips 072323

(imcro) drape 072223

(writever) meet 080123

(visual) Air Fortress 080623

Hellbird

Although my two Hellbird stories are jokes at the expense of Twitter/Elon Musk, the salient point is that Hellbird is NOT in any related to Twitter.  I kind of like this character and he's very likely to appear in a future Medea story.

Hellbird 070423

Ex Hellbird 072323

Superior Being Pizza

Superior Being Pizza is a pizza delivery service run by an advanced energy being, such as those that plague the Star Trek universe.  Because why not?  I wrote a Medea story where this guy shows up again so I guess he's a recurring character now.

Energy Being 053023

Out of this World 080923

Viniculum

I'm really not certain how much mileage I can get out of a supernatural death metal band, but I've named all four members and have learned a few things about them so far so I'm willing to try and work them into more stories.  (Technically the story "Gig" was about a different band - but I've decided to retroactively make it about the band VIniculum.)  Onni is the bass player; he's also a part-time demonic lawyer.  Eevi is the lead singer - and also a werewolf.  Edvin is the guitarist and Arvo is the drummer, I have no idea in what way those two are special yet.  All of these names are Finnish because a lot of my favorite metal bands come from Finland, in particular Amorphis, and also Nightwish.

(visual) Xenofan 060323

(writever) gig 072023

(micro) Imposter 081223

(writever) Convolution  081423

Jalia the Shaman

Jalia McMarrin was my barbarian shaman character when I played Everquest years ago.  I've always wanted to write stories about her, so I've managed three micro stories so far.  Eh, better than nothing.  She very likely exists in the same universe as Medea?

(prompt) names 070323

(micro) matted 071223

(micro) gall 071923

Lots of Micro Stories, Nothing Else

 Here's my writing update for the summer of 2023:  I've written a TON of micro stories, but I've written very little else.

What else should I be writing, you might ask?  Well for one, I set out in January of 2023 to finish a very long (over 275,000 words) fan fiction story called Nerima All-Stars.  I've been working on this for years - the original opening scenes were written maybe around 1999 and read for writer's night, and then shoved into a corner of my hard drive for many years.  But I set out several years ago to "finish" my story, which has expanded exponentially and which I largely have not shown to anyone because I want to finish it first. I have too many fan fiction stories that I've started and never finished.

For two, I have my Grandpa Anarchy stories.  I set out to write a series of short stories around 2021 that together told a larger story.  These became my "Just One Punch" collection or "Book 13" collection of Grandpa Anarchy short stories - but I was not really satisfied with the direction the stories were going, and sometime in 2021 I stopped working on them so much, and in 2022 I did not get a lot of writing done.  I want to go back and rework all of these stories, but it's another big project that I keep putting off.

In the meantime, I began writing micro fiction stories on May 1st 2023, and so far this has been going very well for me.  On the one hand, I've written a LOT of stories.  On the other hand, it amounts to not actually that many words written, since each story is between 70 and 90 words long.  My limit is 500 characters for a Mastodon Toot, and usually I aim for about 480 characters or so in order to be able to add a tag at the end like #microfiction.  I cross-post to Tumblr (which allows tags to be added very easily) and to Hive Social.  I have some followers on Hive, and a hit for me there is 10 or 12 likes.  A hit on Mastodon is at least 50 likes and my best stories have been over 100 likes.  I don't know what a hit is on Tumblr because I get 1 or 2 likes a week there.

I'm going to post my master list of micro stories below.  This list does not include any "prompt" stories - prompt stories are written and immediately published based on a word or picture prompt.  I know of at least two people doing science fiction visual (picture) prompts on Mastodon, and sometimes I respond to these.  I know of at least three word prompts that I've been responding to - in fact since early July I've been trying to respond to every one of these.  There's a writer named Tanweer Dar who does a one-word #mastoprompt every day.  There's another writer/poet named Faerie (on Mastodon at least) who posts a #micropromt word every day.  And there's a largely French group of writers on Mastodon who do a #writever word-a-day challenge - they usually post all the word for the month in one single post, like so:

They do this in French of course, but also they publish an English version, and at least two of the writers I follow post a story in both French and English.  I might be the only other English writer responding to these prompts currently (that I've noticed at least).

What all this means is that since July I've been trying to post three extra micro stories every day.  So far so good!  So in addition to having written 165 micro stories, I've written an additional 167 "prompt" stories.  Which... has been somewhat preventing me from writing a new non-prompt story every day, but I'd written myself so far ahead that for the moment this isn't a problem.

I originally was posting these to mastodon.social (if I remember correctly) but it shut down in June, so on May 25 I switched to mastodon.art.  This means that all of the stories I posted before May 25 are no longer on the internet.  I was thinking I would repost them at some point, but I might wait half a year or a full year to do it.

So that's the state of my writing - over 300 micro stories of 70-90 words, and very little else written in the last 4 months.  Here's my list of non-prompt stories written and posted:

        written story posted #likes

001 050123  my turn 050123

002 050223  delivery 050223

003 050223  hero 050523

004 050223  more creative 050923

005 050323  abyss gazing 050423

006 050323  castle in the sky 050723

007 050323  domestic hero 051123

008 050323  frog 050323

009 050323  infinite lives 051323

010 050323  magical girl 050623

011 050323  memes 051923

012 050323  multi level 051423

013 050323  not whats for dinner 051523

014 050323  quesadilla wizard 050823

015 050423  secret society 051623

016 050523  influencer 051723

017 050523  nostradamus x 051823

018 050523  sword in stone 082023

019 050623  shy god 052123

020 050723  oh snap 061123

021 050823  puppy love 052223

022 050823  back in time 051223

023 050823  creatuib debate 051023

024 050923  garlic chicken 052323

025 051023  sacred toast 052523

026 051223  trapped in time 062223

027 051223  drunk in time 052423

028 051323  historical document 052823

029 051423  dark green woods 052723

030 051623  riddle of the sphinx 052623

031 051623  cookie biscuit 053023

032 051623  silly king/mocking the king 061423

033 051723  bring your cucumber 061223

034 051723  chocolate cake 061823

035 051923  a late start

036 052023  big reveal 053123

037 052123  fish nazis (superior friend) 060623

038 052123  one trick

039 052123  say my name 060323

040 052323  near death (bistro on styx) 060123

041 052323  pocket wizard 081023

042 052323  witch 072623

043 052423  clickbait 060223

044 052423  raven 052523

045 052523  big freeze 061323

046 052523  new world 060723

047 052623  treacle wars 060923

048 052723  noise in the walls 052923

049 052823  hoard 062523

050 052823  sound system 061523

051 052823  stories

052 052923  black water 070623

053 052923  lesbos - week in Mytilene 061723

054 053023  black knight inc 060823

055 053023  energy being 080923

056 053123  burning bush 081223

057 053123  dark void 062023

058 053123  retired god 062123

059 053123  trap door 062923

(59 stories in May)

060 060123  bus stop 070223

061 060123  let there be light 060523

062 060123  magic beans 060423

063 060123  monster rental 062723

064 060123  mysterious tales 061023

065 060223  AITA 062823

066 060223 romantic moon 063023

067 060323  story pill 061623

068 060423  master chef 080823

069 060523  creepy goth girl 070723

070 060523 otherworld bazaar

071 060523  pigomancy/divination 070323

072 060623  put on the dress 070923

073 060623  space marine 073123

074 060723  bloom and doom 062623

075 060723  strange fruit 071623

076 060823  fires burn (published 060823 ???)

077 060923  departure 062423

078 061123  justice warrior 071423

079 061223  golden binoculars 061923

080 061223  time machine 071323

081 061323  strange women 070423

082 061323  the librarian 070123

083 061423  worker bee 080723

084 061523  moo! 071223

085 061623  junk fairy 071523

086 061623  zombie 073023

087 061723  resurrection

088 061923  going woke 062323

089 062023  sleek siler sting ray

090 062223  cabbie 071723

091 062223  profanity 072523

092 062223  stagecoach/shotgun 071923

093 062423  eternal youth 072823

094 062423  legend has it 072923

095 062523  deterrent 072123

096 062523  volcano theme 081123

097 062623  exposure 072223

098 062623  gateway

099 062723  patsys pizza/future pizza 080323

100 062823  tooth fairy

101 062923  offering 071123

(42 stories in June)

102 070123  boat smash/sense of porpoise 070823

103 070123  cheese

104 070123  deleted world

105 070123  sea altar 071023

106 070123  submersible 070123

107 070223  city of books

108 070223  daddy watching

109 070223  ghost marriage

110 070223  pretty dress 080123

111 070223  wardrobe malfunction

112 070423  hellbird 070523

113 070423  lost things 071823

114 070523  neutral meeting

115 070623  jump the shark

116 070623  mirkgloom forest

117 070723  gaia prime

118 070723  too many books

119 070923  crop circles 081323

120 071123  apocalypse sentence

121 071123  paradise

122 071123  worlds away

123 071223  the ending

124 071323  spicy sandwich

125 071423  demon troubles 072023

126 071523  coffee story 080623

127 071523  imagination

128 071523  shipwrecks of death 072323

129 071623  book of hate

130 071623  statistical proof

131 071923  gateway of worlds 072723

132 071923  quicksand

133 071923  weather control

134 072023  hellsite 072423

135 072223  bath bomb

136 072223  legal matters

137 072223  megalodon

138 072323  quips

139 072423  sightless 080523

140 072523  for the birds

141 072623  discombobulated

142 072623  ex hellbird                080423

143 072823  anchorage 072823

144 072923  absinthe

145 072923  time travel party

146 073023  a visit from death

147 073023  death fairy

148 073023  spilt milk

149 073023  wise owl

150 073123  armageddon

151 073123  leviathan

(50 stories in July)

152 080123  ghost animals 080223

153 080223  ghost hunter 080223

154 080523  impossible exploration

155 080623  brass raven

156 080623  selkies lament

157 080623  wicked piper

158 080623  worship

159 080723  alien discs

160 080723  desire to read

161 080723  fairy godmother

162 080823  fearocious

163 080823  seven seas

164 080823  alien discs

165 080923  out of this world

165 081123  lavender strudel

The Micro Story Writing Process

 I've written 50+ micro stories of 500 characters or less this month.  My goal was to average 1 per day, which I've easily exceeded.  Although I haven't worked on any of my other writing, I feel pretty accomplished.  And for that reason I'm going to keep writing these stories -- I feel good every time I'm able to fit an idea into only 500 characters, and if I get it just right then I enjoy rereading it even weeks later.  When I post, I always get a few likes from other people so I know the stories worked for them as well, and it's something that I can manage in half an hour -- unlike trying to add to my massive 200,000 word fan fiction story Nerima All-Stars, which requires me to regularly reread what I've written so I can remember all of the balls I'm trying to juggle.  ^_^

I find the entire writing process fascinating and mysterious.  Typically I have an idea and I write it out, and it's too many words, too many characters, and then I have to edit it down.  I really enjoy this part because you're trying to figure out how to include the most detail in the fewest number of words -- it's a nice little writing puzzle.

Two days ago I had an idea for a story about a person transitioning into a new life in a new world -- just the idea of the transition itself.  I wrote it out, and it was well over 650 characters long.  Which meant I needed to trim a LOT.

I began with "What are the advantages?"  "You'll get a new life in a new world.  You get to choose who you will become."  When I set about editing, I collapsed these two lines into a single statement:  "The advantage is a new life in a new world.  You choose who you will become."  Much more compact.  Likewise, I had a couple of lines about him being strapped in... to some sort of machine that facilitated the transfer to a new world.  Then I had the new person stepping out into sunlight on another world.

I wanted the ending to be the surprise in not remembering who they'd been, but it was hard to fit everything into 500 characters.  Finally I decided that part of the problem was  trying to include being strapped into a machine and then awaking in a new world -- it took too many words.  Just have them step through a portal, and into sunlight, and that was enough to convey the transfer from one world to the next. That gave me just enough room to include a bit about trying to remember the past.

"The advantage is a new life in a new world.  You choose who you will become."

"And the disadvantages?"

"You leave your old life behind -- your friends,  family... and  memories.  You won't recall who you were."

He was old, with few friends.  A new start was enticing.  He signed the paperwork, and stepped through the gateway... and into bright sunlight.

She froze.  What had she been thinking?  Memories drifted then vanished like morning mist.  She could not recall.

The next day, I had an idea involving time travel.  I was thinking about how tiny mistranslations in a sacred text could turn into huge holy wars in the future.  I'm not just talking about the Bible -- for example, if the United States founding fathers had more carefully spelled out what they meant about the right to bear arms in the 2nd amendment, we might not have people carrying assault rifles into a Starbucks to order a latte.  It's tempting to think, if you could just travel back in time, you could save a lot of lives by changing how someone wrote down a few words.

So I started by writing:  Brother Ignacius studied the parchment by candlelight.  This was an X, was it not?

With a flash, a stranger stood before him.  Brother Ignacius fell to his knees.  "An angel!" he exclaimed.

"I'm not an angel," the man replied.  "I am a traveler in time.  That word is not X, it's X."

Normally I try to pick names that are shorter than "Brother Ignacius" because of space considerations, but that name felt right for a Middle Ages or earlier monk.  My two biggest problems were that I hadn't decided what my mistranslation would be just yet, and I wasn't exactly sure how to end the story.  My first ending just had the traveler imparting his knowledge and Brother Ignacius was like, thanks for telling me, and that ending didn't have any surprise or twist to it.  Then I considered having Ignacius consider telling this story to the abbot, but no, he would never believe it -- which was a slightly better ending, but not one I could fit into 500 characters.

I tried researching mistranslations, which first yielded a lot of stories about presidents and Soviet leaders giving speeches that were not translated well, then yielded pages that talked about how the Bible is full of translation errors, but didn't give specific examples.  Finally I landed on the Wikipedia page for Bible errata, which deals with weird translation errors (and is the basis for some jokes in Good Omens that I was half-remembering).  This lead me to the treacle bible, in which a Hebrew word that could mean balm or medicine was translated as treacle -- which at the time also could mean cure-all.

That was what I needed, because the word treacle is inherently funny and specific words always trump general ideas.  I could refer to the "treacle wars of 2300, in which millions died" and you didn't really have to know the details of how a holy war turned on a mistranslated word, you'd get the general idea.

I also wrote a line along the lines of, "I understand," said Brother Ignacius, who in fact did not.  And I immediately liked that idea and that line.  Why should a medieval monk, even if he's convinced that this angel is really just a human, understand in any way how a simple word choice could lead to millions of lives being lost in the future?  So that became part of my ending.

Brother Ignacius studied parchment by candlelight.  This word meant treacle, did it not?

With a flash, a stranger stood before him.  "An angel!"  Ignacius exclaimed, falling to his knees.

"Not an angel," the man replied.  "I am a traveler in time.  Please translate that word as 'balm'.  Doing so will prevent the Treacle Wars of 2300, in which millions died."

"I see," replied Ignacius, who did not.  The man vanished.  Ignacius shrugged.  Treacle, balm - what was the difference?

 I really like working out what makes the best ending, and how I can manage to fit it into 500 characters.  ^_^

Here's my last story:  over the past week and a half, for several days when I walked into my bathroom, I could sometimes hear someone filing on metal.  It sounded like someone was slowly sawing through a steel pipe.  I live on the ground floor of an apartment building, so it wasn't coming from below me (although I had visions of someone trying to break into my apartment from underneath).  It was most likely coming from the apartment next door, but I never did find out what it was.  It eventually stopped.

I was thinking about that this morning, and I decided to write a story around the idea.  So this morning I wrote:

He heard scratching and pounding through the walls of his bathroom, as if someone were trying to break through.  His house was set apart, down a lonely lane -- there could be no one on the other side.  He ignored the noise.

One day he heard a faint voice calling, "Let me out!"

But he knew there was no one there, so he ignored this as well.

As you can see, I have yet to figure out what the ending should be.  ^_^  The voice fades away?  Something breaks through from another dimension?  The police show up?  I'm still trying to figure out where this one leads. 

Micro Stories

 I've started writing micro stories.  I'm posting one a day to my Mastodon account, @vanellopemint@home.social.  (I recently found out that home.social may close down this year.  :(  It seemed like such a stable instance!)

Anyway, I've been fascinated by microfiction for quite a while.  For years I've followed two accounts on Twitter that write within the 280-character Twitter limit, @microflashfic and @microsff.  The first account posted several times a day for over a year.  They've both collected into books, I believe.

I wanted to try doing this as well, but I was intimidated by writing a story within the 280 character limit.  It seemed like a very daunting task, an amazing trick.  I do write a lot of short stories -- usually 1,000 to 2,000 words -- but writing such a tiny story seemed impossible.

After the Musk invasion of Twitter, I moved to Mastodon where @microsff@mastodon.art also posts, and I followed several hashtags, #microfiction, #flashfiction, and #smallstories and discovered other people who do this, including @humpbuckletales@mastondon.social, @idle@writing.exchange and @neverworn@social.retrodon.net.  Mastodon allows for 500 characters which seemed more do-able to me.

On Monday May 1st I tried again to imagine a micro story, but came up with nothing.  I went to bed, and an idea finally popped into my head.  I got up and wrote a 200-word story involving Grandpa Anarchy, the hero I've written many stories about.  I was really proud of this -- I'd found one definition of micro fiction online that set the limit at 300 words or less.  But then I realized my 200-word story was over 1,200 characters -- far too long to fit into a Mastodon post.  So I went back to bed.

And then!  I got another idea for a very short story.  I got up and wrote it and published it, and I was very proud of myself.  I thought:  I can do this!

Carlos beheld a beautiful woman in flowing robes.  "I was struck by bus..."

"While saving someone," she said.  "It often happens."

His eyes widened.  "You're an isekai reincarnation goddess?"

She smiled.  "I send people into new worlds on new adventures."

"Like a Game Master who decides everyone's fate."  He sighed.  "I ran RPGs.  I'll miss that."

"But I never get my own adventure," she added.  "Unless...."

"Yes?"

"How would you like to be the new God of Second Chances...?"

The next day, I managed to write three more while at work.  I thought:  Hey, this isn't so hard!  I could maybe publish once a week!

The day after that, I wrote 8-9 more, and I realized I should probably try posting one story a day for the month of May.  So I posted two that night to catch up.

Thursday i wasn't able to write anything.  I had one idea in my head most of the day -- about vampires and garlic.  Why do they hate garlic?  It turns out one possible reason is that people thought vampirism was a disease of the blood, and garlic has antimicrobial abilities.  In other words, there's no intrinsic reason why vampires would hate garlic.

That seemed like good story material.  I could imagine a vampire that loves garlic bread, for example.  But I couldn't manage to turn that into a story.

In the evening I watched the rest of season 3 of Lower Decks, and that gave me ideas that also went nowhere.  Later I was trying to work out a story involving the plethora of secret organizations that supposedly rule the world from the shadows -- surely there was a joke in there somewhere that I could tell.

Maybe this is not as easy as I thought?

I woke up at 1:30 AM, and the idea for the story popped into my head, based on secret societies.  I immediately got up and jotted down the idea, lay back down, got back up and wrote the idea out, lay back down, got up and rework/edit more than once.  Finally I went back to sleep.

In the morning on the way to work I came up with another.  So!  Not so difficult after all!  That's one story for Thursday and one for Friday.  One a day is all I need to keep up.  ^_^

I've managed at least one micro story a day since -- sometimes 2-3.  At this point I'm 10 days in and I've written about 24 stories, so I'm well on my way to doing one a day for at least a month.  I can probably do this for several months at least.  Could I do it for a full year?  I guess we'll find out.  ^_^

Some are better than others.  One story I posted late last week got about 25 likes/boosts.  This counts as viral for me on Mastodon.  :D  I was lucky that a person with a large following boosted me, and that exposed me to many more people than normal.

You might not think 24 likes sounds like much, but when I was lying on my bed my desktop computer would beep, followed by my iPad, my iPhone, and then the old iPhone that I use for playing Pokemon Go.  So it was a lot of beeps each time someone liked and boosted.  ^_^

"Become a hero?" the girl exclaimed.  "Defeat the Dark Lord?  No thanks!  I'd rather run a bookstore!"

As she left, Miardolyn the wizard said, "Apologies, Lord.  Summoning an otherworldly hero who truly wishes to be one is daunting."

Lord Danozlan nodded.  "The previous one became a cook."

"Do not despair, Lord!" Miardolyn drew a new circle.  "I shall try yet again!"

"Please," said the Dark Lord.  "If we find not a hero to defeat me, I must conquer the world.  Who wants that?"

I average 2-4 likes/boosts per post.  But a story I posted a few days later got no likes or boosts until near the end of the day, when my friend Matt liked it.  Well at least I know someone looked at it!  The story I posted the next morning had several likes/boosts in the first hour so I know people are reading, just not every one is a banger.

I've cross-posted some of them to Hive Social as well.  Maybe I should post to Tumblr.  I haven't left Twitter completely but I refuse to post there anymore.

In other writing news, I wrote very little Grandpa Anarchy fiction last year.  In November I worked on my fan fiction novel called The Nerima All-Stars.  Afterwards, I decided to give up on writing Grandpa Anarchy stories and try to finish my novel instead.  That... hasn't happened.  I've got a bit of writing on it done in the past few months, but not as much as I'd like.  I wrote only a couple of scenes in April, I think.

Down the Storm God Rabbit Hole

 

I'm still working on my fanfiction story that has been my main focus for the last several November NaNoWriMo's, titled the Nerima All-Stars.  I generally don't work on it except around NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month) time, but I want to try and finish it and get it published so that I don't have to think about it anymore.   That means working on it in December as well, and probably January and February.

I haven't written much since Dec 1st, but I picked it back up this week.  I was thinking:  every character ought to have something they're passionate about.  This was advice that I'd read recently, and it makes sense, it makes your characters more interesting and memorable.  And I have this one character in my story, her name is Jin -- she's a storm controller, but she's kept her abilities a secret her whole life.

And -- what I'd written so far, she really didn't stand out.  I imagined her as a kind of mousey recluse who worked from home and did most of her socializing online.  But I had figured out what she was passionate about, it just didn't come through in my writing.  Jin is a fan of a made-up magical girl anime series called Mahou Shoujo Stormbringer Akari.  She owns figurines and drama cds and all kinds of merchandise from the show, and she even writes Akari fanfiction.  I had decided that when her house gets destroyed, along with her precious collection, this would be a dramatic moment when she decides to unleash her power over storms and weather, to announce herself to the world, to "fight back" at the villain who was mostly responsible for this destruction.

The problem was, I had failed to write her as actually passionate about this anime.  At first she didn't even mention it.  Later I had her mention it in an off-hand manner, but this was hardly good enough.  A true fan will talk about the show, compare things to the show, quote the show, say things like, "this is just like that episode where Akari did X!"  When you meet her, you should learn at least this one thing about her.

Of course, it's hard to refer to a show you know nothing about.  What do I know about Mahou Shoujo Stormbringer Akari?  Her name is Akari.  She controls weather.  She's a magical girl.  That's it, and that's all in the title.  I knew literally nothing more.

So I decided to work on background info for my made-up anime show.  Often, working on background info is a way for me to "start writing" before I actually add to the story.  It's always useful in the end.

I gave Akari a full name -- Akari Harada, and I came up with two names for her best friends.  I came up with the name of a local police officer, a young man she is infatuated with.  Then I needed her major enemy.  "The Queen of Storms", I thought.  A weather-controller magical girl who battles with a weather-controller villain, why not?  As for a name?  I'd been picking names at random from lists of Japanese first names and surnames, but a villain required something more unusual.  Like, all of the villains in Sailor Moon are named after gemstones.  I needed something like that.

I decided that "Montana, Queen of Storms" sounded good.  Why not name her after a U.S. state?  It sounded like an anime thing to do.  Her minions could be other states -- not Washington of course, and not California, that's too famous.  How about Arizona, Colorado, and Dakota?  I imagined they were like the three storms from Big Trouble in Little China -- Wind, Rain, Thunder.  Dakota of the Wind.  Yeah.

So far I had some basic details but didn't know much about the story or the background of the character.  I decided, maybe she's the daughter of a storm god, and that's where her powers come from.  So I did some research.  Raijin is the Japanese storm god; he always appears with his brother Fujin.  He's kind of a trickster god, kind of associated with death and destruction.  That doesn't sound like a great father figure, although of course while storms bring death and destruction, rain also brings forth life so there are two sides to his character.  But he also has a son who is a storm god as well, Raitaro.

So I figured, maybe Akari is the child of Raitaro.  There's not a lot of information on him really, he's just the son of the thunder god, so Akari might be better thought of as the granddaughter of the storm god.  In Japan, I think "storm god" usually just means Raijin.

There's also a storm beast called Raiju, who appears as a lightning wolf or dog but also as just about any other animal in existence.  So, her magical girl guide/companion would be a cute puppy named Raiju, or a puppy who was a raiju but not necessarily the raiju.

So far so good!  I wrote up a short paragraph about how Akari grew up, and how she discovered that she's really the granddaughter of the storm god (Raiju shows up and tells her of course), and she is forced to become a magical girl and battle with evil forces (who are also mostly storm based).

But there was also a paragraph about Raijin that compared him to other storm gods -- they all have similar powers and tempermants.  It compared him to Leigong, Chinese god of thunder, and to Parjanya, Hindu god of rain, thunder, and lightning.  It compared him to Thor (Norse god), Zeus (Greek) and Taranis (Celtic).  And also to El, or YHWH, who historically was a Semitic storm deity before he evolved into the god of everything.

My first thought was:  Oh, she needs to discover other daughters or granddaughters of other storm gods!  That would be cool!  Let's just go all in in the weather controller thing!  So I came up with names:  Penelope, a granddaughter of Zues; Damini, a granddaughter of Parjanya, and Keshet, who was descended from the Hebrew storm god.

And then I was like -- do I really want to declare a character the daughter or granddaughter of Yaweh?  I was well familiar with  the idea that Yaweh was a storm god first, and god of everything later.  But did I want to treat the Christian god as just another mythological deity?

I did some research on Yaweh the storm god, and I was still debating whether to do it when I realized that I've really fallen too far down the rabbit hole.  This is a side character to a fake anime that will only be mentioned in passing in my story because one fairly minor character is a fan of said anime.  Like, let her be the grandchild of Yaweh, it's not going to even get mentioned in my story anyway!

I still need to come up with a few key phrases that Stormbringer Akari regularly says, some "In the name of the Moon, I shall punish you!" mojo, but for the most part I have my anime background.  I realized part way through this that I can just make the rest up as I go along.  Saying "This is just like that time Akari battled the demon Zograag in the Rainbow Kingdom!" does not require me or anyone to know anything about the anime episode in question, and the more outlandish the situation referenced the better.  I can borrow famous scenes or battles from other anime or movies or science fiction shows or whatever, change the names, and it will sound like this magical girl has had some outlandish adventures that we will never get to know anything more about.

So... mission accomplished I guess?  Now I actually need to rework actual scenes and dialogue in my actual story... you know, real writing.