Lately I’ve taken to writing microfiction on Twitter. There wasn’t an epiphany or earth-moving impetus behind it. It was very fly by night. I’ve been doing them for over a week, once a day.
Back when I posted a lot of flash fiction on here I used to do 100 word stories daily for quite a while. It eventually petered out because, even though I had enough ideas, more important things got in the way as they tend to do. With the Twitter thing it’s different because there’s less writey-time and more a mental wrangle to fit a plot or sense within 140 letters.
I’m still going to write here in the blog but one can only post so much political or theological commentary before getting burnt out on it, especially if you like writing fiction. There’s only so much you can do with writing about what other people have written or thought out, when what all you think about is telling your own stories. The Internet is rife with the former but only I (or you, or anyone) can produce the latter.
Eyes squinted shut and bared teeth. He flinched once, twice, then pried opened an eye. The waterballoon was left on the ground.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 7, 2012
A man looked at the universe and shrank. He looked through a microscope and returned to normal. His note: “perspective is nothing”.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 8, 2012
The village virgins slept with no weapons; only the “Sleeping Thief” knew of the nuanced success with bedside burglings.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 9, 2012
In stealth he stepped left, right. The painted eyes of his grandmother looked directly into his eyes. She watches from the other side!
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 10, 2012
Superhero stances and laser-pointing fingers—the pastor cracked electric with comic book pages tucked inside his sermon notes and memories.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 11, 2012
The ghost, birthed from a drowning, crept its translucence from dry pavement onto dewy grass. It was finally facing a congenital fear.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 12, 2012
At twilight, with masks skyward, assassins soak in a green mist. They pull down their faces, poised. They resolve the contract at midnight.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 13, 2012
Haunting the undergrads was the image of a lily-white girl with cornrows. They failed the final but the professor’s hypothesis was correct.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 14, 2012
Skydiving, ignoring the rip cord, he pushed the experimental button. Nothing happened until he passed the earth’s surface and kept falling.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 15, 2012
Endless War: before news of the truce reached their ears, archers by the thousands on the escarpment loosed arrows into the city below.
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 16, 2012
Antipodal doppelgänger pen-pal: “Let’s start digging.”
— Jay (@Jaybreak) December 17, 2012