January 2021 - Pocket Biome

Technically, Courtney’s eyes were colorless. That’s the case for all so-called blue-eyed people. If it were possible to look into her eyes with no light present, her iris would be colorless. She loved this fact.

She was pretty sure it was a fact.

Sitting on the beach, Maryl requests that Courtney focus.

“Sorry,” she says. “I got lost in thought.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Maryl replies. “When you notice, or when someone else notices, that you’ve lost focus, simply return to the object.”

“Sorry, object?” Courtney ventures to ask.

“Again, do not apologize when you have done nothing wrong. The focus or object of the practice. In our case, the object is the horizon.”

Courtney stops herself from apologizing again and directs her gaze to the horizon.

“Remember, when it feels right, when the reflection of the sun on the surface begins to fill your eyes, close them quickly to trap the light, and then just watch,” Maryl instructs.

Courtney follows Maryl’s instructions. With her eyes closed, she sees the electric glow behind her eyes coalesce into a scene, but the next thing she knows, she’s thinking about how she can almost taste the salt of the sea through her nose.

Part of the Twelve Stories collection.

This year, I want to do something different.

I have a lot more going on now then when I started this. I started posting a bunch of poetry because it doesn’t take as long to write, but I’m not all that interested in continuing to write poetry. I mostly want to write fiction. Trying to write a decent story once a week just isn’t quite feasible anymore, so, for 2021, I’m going to be adding one story per month.

I’m leaving everything else about it rather open. I have some ideas for January, but I might not stick with them throughout the year. I want to come up with some new things to experiment with, after all.

To start with, I’ll be using some random word generators and writing prompts and go from there.

As usual, I’ll link to the stories below as they come out. I’ll also add a note about what technique I was experimenting with.

The Water Shine Persists – generated some random words and built a short scene around them.

ample acceptable amiability – randomly generated words as a foundation

a bothersome counterpoint derives eternity – I think this is called a pangram – first letter of each word cycles through the alphabet

the retreat ends – didn’t utilize any particular experiments with this, just tried to tie everything so far together into something more coherent

in the cave – this month was busy and dramatic, I ended up just connecting more dots from previous experiments

the land falls into the sea – this month was actually busier and more dramatic, so this was just stream-of-consciousness with very little editing

adequate fire in a cave or tunnel – this month, I hit the keyboard randomly, and then went back and looked for syllables/things that reminded me of words and shaped the writing around those found words

lily on the cliff – beginning with a title which was largely randomly generated, this month, I wanted to focus on a setting, but even that ends up taking on some narrative structure.

Cafe Ceiling – much like last month, I randomly generated a title, which gave me a vivid mental image, which I attempted to paint.

An Instant – bringing things together which were not originally intended to be connected

Collapsing – this began as a pangram poem, but using two words in a row with each letter instead of just one. It was then shaped into a more narrative structure, ending with a bit of stream-of-consciousness.

dreaming – a one sentence story to end with