Today

Today I ate lunch alone at a vegetarian restaurant and took my dog to the dog park to run her little heart out. It was seventy degrees this morning, a welcome break after a month of staggering temperatures in nineties and hundreds that felt all the more unbearable due to the humidity. Today was a day off after months in which I had at least one freelance project to deliver on each day (there are no weekends in freelance).

Today was glorious and slow-paced, a thing I crave from time to time. I even took a nap in my husband’s nap chair (he uses the chair to read news, too, but the thing seems magical in its ability to invite sleep). Today, I got a rejection (one I thought would be an easy get) and an acceptance (a longer shot – a dynamite publication for one of my strangest pieces ever. I look forward to posting this new piece of work because I haven’t been writing as much short fiction and got so used to that sense of completion.

With focus on my novel and my work, I haven’t been allowing myself the luxury to write much short work. I know I miss it because I seem to have mentioned my dismay on the phone in an interview with SA Express News about After the Gazebo. So I wrote a very short piece, semi-autobiographical (what isn’t – even at the fantasy level?), and now I feel refreshed. I believe that short fiction writers who dare the novel path should never completely abandon their shorties.

It’s funny, I was planning to speak highly of my novel during that phone interview, but I think there are times when I can’t even pretend to like the thing. I love and believe in the story, am proud of it, but it’s such a monstrous thing—has taking up years of my time and caused me more than a few uneasy days—that I believe there’s some resentment that has built. My hope is that ours is a tumultuous, passionate relationship that will end well. We will part, when it’s time, on amiable terms. 

We’re soon to part; I can feel it.

In the meantime, here’s to short fiction breaks and seventy degree days in South Texas! We need all the breaks we can get.

Today’s prompt: Write a story about a retired couple who drive some distance to a landmark site they’ve been looking forward to visiting for some time. When they get there, they are extremely disappointed by what they find and begin to argue. As they argue, a buried secret emerges. *I’m doing this one myself, as soon as I hit publish on this blog post. Have fun! 

xo Jen