A year of tiny stories, and a new experiment

(tl;dr: my daily stories are now at www.scattering.ink, along with a weekly newsletter version that includes longer fiction)

A year ago, I started writing a tiny story (92 words, on average) every day. I thought this would be a good way to practice having ideas and acting on them while holding them lightly. But mostly I thought it would be fun. And it was!

I also decided to post them all online. I have always been a nervous sharer of my work in all sorts of ways, so I thought a bit of regular practice putting stories out there would do me good, too. A few people have said nice things about them, which is delightful. But I’ve also found it much easier not to worry whether people say or think nice things about them, or the other things I write. It’s become easier not to think of my stories as my babies, and instead to think of them as seeds. I scatter them to the wind, and a few might find the kind of earth they need to take root. That’s enough.

For a long time, until it had been long enough that it seemed silly, my website said ‘I am experimenting with writing a tiny story every day’. But for a while before that, it said, ‘I am experiment’, because I am a hasty writer and a poor proofreader. As with most such errors, my wife pointed this out, and it has entered our household lexicon. I am experiment! It’s a good thing to be.

I am still experiment, and as every scholarly paper declares, further research is needed. So now I am experiment with giving my daily stories their own home, and bringing a longer piece to live with them each week. It’s called Scattering, and I hope you’ll give it a try.