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Category Archives: 52II

The 52 Project

For people who haven’t seen this before, a word of explanation. As a personal challenge to myself, back in April of 09, I undertook to write a short story every week for a year. I nearly did it, too, up until the last couple of weeks, in which life kept kneeing me in the groin until I let the brass ring slip out of my hands.

I’m giving it another go this year. Now don’t be expecting literary gold here, I work full time and have a boatload of other projects, so that week I have to write each story usually ends up being 5 hours or so. They aren’t edited. Sometimes I have time to run them through a spell check.

They just have to be stories, the rules don’t say they have to be good ones and frankly a lot of them suck. This is embarrassing, which is part of the point. I don’t like to expose my creative process, or show half-done work, so in theory I will be highly motivated to make the time to write good stuff, make time to edit it, and to learn from every mistake so that no one ever actually sees the crap that is a first draft. (Theory still has some things to answer for at this point.)

Oh, by the way, you know what else really motivates me to keep writing and improving? Feedback. Oh, and cash.

These stories are posted under a Creative Commons license that allows you to download, re-use, modify or make derivative works out of them, provided you don’t do it for profit and you credit me. If you are a graphic artist of some stripe and feel inspired to illustrate one of these stories, please do let me know.

¶ Posted Announcement § 52 § Site Stuff ‡ Comments (1)

07 – In This Time of Wonders

They say that when NASA’s head of exobiology research read the first message, he fainted. They say that when he was revived, he picked up the paper on which the message was printed, read it through once, and fainted again. Whether Anderson Wiley actually fainted, the story became symbolic of the beginning of a new era. This was Mankind’s first contact with intelligent creatures from another star, and nothing would ever be the same again.

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¶ Posted 18 October 2010 § 52 § Prose ‡ Comments (0)

06 – The Wind

It was the sound of the wind that got me in the end. It blows over the abandoned houses and around the dead still cars that litter the highways, and listening to it is like voyeurism. It’s a kind of intimacy, the sound of wind flowing over the vacant works of man, as if this is what nature only does when no one is around to see.

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¶ Posted 11 October 2010 § 52 § Prose ‡ Comments (0)

05 – The Goats

Our purpose was to bring upon the earth a superior species of flying spider goat. It is easy to criticize with the advantage of hindsight what seemed at the time a faultless, if idealistic, goal – but I think if you examine honestly the problems that ensued, you will find that none could reasonably have been predicted, let alone prevented. The sad truth is that the flying spider goat was an inevitable development, and the consequences of that development correspondingly unavoidable.

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¶ Posted 04 October 2010 § 52 § Prose ‡ Comments (0)

04 – Another 100 Words

They grew on the bones of the dead, and it was an embarrassment of riches. The star poisons were only stimulants to the fungus, which swelled in the radioactive breeze. Each phosphorescent pustule reflected the light of a neighbor in the gloom beneath impenetrable caustic skies, until the glow of one pulsed in synchrony with another, another, another. Generations grew and flashed and surrendered to the acidic mire. Patterns of light became a tessellated map of thought, and a mind awoke in the gloom. Oh, such paradise have I been born into, it thought, God does truly love his creation.

[ratings]

Another 100 Words by Kenneth Lett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

¶ Posted 27 September 2010 § 52 § Prose ‡ Comments (1)

03 – Cat and Chicken

Frank watched the little swirl of light with a sinking sense of his own mortality. The cat watched it too, and Frank hoped that it felt as miserable as he did. He had never liked cats, but this one seemed to relish its role in his humiliation. No, if it felt anything at all behind those lazy green eyes, it was probably plain malice. In any case the cats seemed to see nothing interesting in the little ball of magic. Or couldn’t see it, he couldn’t remember if cats could see the thaumic spectrum or not.

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¶ Posted 20 September 2010 § 52 § Prose ‡ Comments (0)

Director’s Cut: 01 – I Woke Up on Wednesday

When I awoke, head still heavy with sleep and eyes glued shut with congealed sleep, it took me some time to figure out what was wrong.

Well, there was no alarm, that was one thing. Not being a morning person, waking up to silence usually indicates that I’ve long overslept and the clock radio has given up its futile task.

No, something else. Not just that I was uncomfortable, either, lying on my back with arms to my sides in that peaceful pose that only corpses can be put into for any length of time without cramping.

I began to roll over, drifting back beneath the surface again, sleep a warm sea welcoming me home. Mid-roll, my forehead came into sharp contact with something cold and hard, and the delicious warmth of unconsciousness was jerked away from me to the accompaniment of a multitude of very wrong sensations. Firstly, cold hard pain in the forehead, but also something had wrapped itself around my arm and was pulling at me painfully. Blankets were twisted strangely around my legs, and there was the distinct and disconcerting smell of cucumbers. For a moment I hung in that twilight space between dream and awake, where you are not quite sure if things are real or not. I saw strange images, some other room, some bed not my own, blinking lights, strange blankets, plaid pillows.

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¶ Posted 16 September 2010 § 52 § Director's Cut § Prose ‡ Comments (0)

02 – Story for Miranda

In a forest, a deep and ancient forest, a spirit rose up through the spring sap coursing beneath the bark of its ancient Tree. It rose up past the squirrels scampering up and down the trunk, past the birds building nests in its limbs, up up up to where the sun warmed thick green needles. It rose to the very crown of green that rose above all the other trees nearby. It drank in the sunlight and felt the buzz of life that flowed and pulsed around the great trunk.

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¶ Posted 13 September 2010 § 52 ‡ Comments (0)

01 – Fangirl

Skiffy Khan is not very big, as science fiction cons go, but it’s ours. I include myself in that “ours” because not only did I live in Franklin, where the Khan had been held for the last eight years, and not only had I attended since its inception, but I had finally become an official part of it. Local author, small book of short stories published by an actual publisher of paper books, panelist on three separate panels, and manning my very own table stacked with trade paperback copies of “The Life of Mind”, my modest contribution to the world of Arts and Letters. As the single published local author, I was Khan royalty.

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¶ Posted 07 September 2010 § 52 § Prose ‡ Comments (1)

Total Social (network) Domination

On Monday the 6th of September, I begin a second attempt at the 52 project. Updates will be posted to my FaceBook, Twitter, LiveJournal, Tumblr, MySpace and any other social network that seems like a good idea at the time. Not just for the sheer narcissism of it, but to spread the word and encourage others to join in the project.

If anyone else is interested, I have been working on a website specifically for 52*, which will hold users to their chosen deadline, keep track of their word count, and connect their stories to their own social network. If that sounds like fun, do let me know.

* Or 12, or 365, or 8760….

¶ Posted 31 August 2010 § 52 § Site Stuff ‡ Comments (1)

52 II

Well, I admit it, I fell down on the first 52 project. It was going so well, but a mere 4 stories short of the end, I let life get the better of me.

Having broken my rules for the project, I cannot claim to have succeeded, nor in good conscience continue on with 12, my next writing project. I’ll have to start all over from the beginning, I’m afraid. One story a week, every week, for a year.

52 Mark I was not a complete loss, though. I have learned a lot, and armed with hindsight, I will begin Mark II with an adjusted set of rules that should make the output a bit higher quality and guard against the vagaries of life. So then, the rules:

1. Every week, before Monday Midnight (12:00am PST) I will post a complete original story.

2. Each story, with three exceptions, must have been entirely written in the week since the previous posting.

3. Three times during the year I may use a story that was not written within that week – but it must be an original, never before posted story.

4. In observance of my avowed goal to revise, edit and re-post last year’s stories, every week I will post an edited version of the story from the corresponding week of last year’s series. These must be posted by Thursday midnight, which was the deadline for stories in the last series.

Wish me luck.

¶ Posted 24 August 2010 § 52 § On Writing § Site Stuff ‡ Comments (0)