Jimmy Turns Thirty-Five (A Gen Y Story)

Jimmy, who was “James” only on his tax documents, was looking forward to his thirty-fifth birthday. Like always, he had carefully managed his money over the year to provide for all the things he wanted and to have a bit extra to buy himself something special for his birthday. This year, it was a doozy. He had seen it coming all year and had taken extra care to stow away even more of his pizza delivery tips (which were more than usual), actively cutting back on his consumption of alcohol and pot. What had Jimmy’s mind wandering so much when…

Continue reading

Iron and Clay: A Doomer Tale

Jim was the smartest kid in Glenns Ferry, Idaho. He aced every math exam, always tested well in science and English, and got exemplary marks in history. He was otherwise a normal, well-liked kid that played football and soccer throughout high school. Though he was never the star athlete, sports kept him active and grounded and provided him a good set of friends off the field and year-round. All of them knew he was the smartest of the group, but he never made a big deal out of it, preferring to go with the flow and help with homework only…

Continue reading

Creating Plot Points on the Micro Level (Lined Paper)

I wrote Lined Paper after giving a short piece of advice on how to pace scenes so that they keep the interest of the reader: Hey David, how should I think about control “tempo” in writing? I’m bad at explaining things but I’m trying to write my NaNo and when I go back and look at stuff, I see that the scenes I like have a lot more detail in them and come across as slower, and the ones I’m more unsure about almost look like summaries of what happened than being, uh.. “present” in what is happening? Sorry if that…

Continue reading

Lined Paper

Jim checked his phone out of habit as he rushed down the hall. Before he could see just how late he was, the screen dimmed. “Buggy piece of dogshit!” he said, shaking the infernal device, suppressing the desire to throw it through the 5th story window. For moment he decided on a compromise, agreeing with his inner demon to toss it in the trash and buy a new one after work, but before he could act, he found the phone tumbling out of his hand as he fell onto the floor. “What the fuck?” he said, twisting around on the…

Continue reading