The interview lasted a half hour, so I had enough time to wax philosophical about fiction writing. One point I tried to make was that an advantage of writing over other media is that it isn’t limited by technology. I guess that’s not totally true. What I really meant is that if you are a competent writer, you are only limited by your own imagination.
The reason I was so excited to talk about imagination in writing is that I had a great experience pushing myself to be more imaginative earlier that evening. I started noticing a trend in my stories for Name Your Tale. A lot of them were more realistic than my usual stuff, and some were pretty sad. I was afraid I would start bumming people out after a while if I kept it up, so when I started thinking about how to write my version of “I Want Out” for the Thursday Threesome, I started by telling myself “be imaginitive,” which myself interpreted as “write about magicians.”
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been donning a web producer hat on top of my writer hat. Which works out, because my web producer hat is one of those big three-pointed colonial deals, and my writer hat is more like a beanie, but all one color and without the propeller. So I guess you could say it’s more of a writer yarmulke.
What’s the point of all of this hat wearing? Glad you asked, and good pun, by the way. The point is I started a new web site that I would like you to visit, and it’s called Name Your Tale.
The way it works is this: You think of a story title, we write the story. Now, before you get ahead of yourself, I’m not talking in the Royal We here, when I say “we write the story.” No, I’m talking about me and my good pal Jeremy S. Griffin. The goal right now is to publish two brand new 100-word stories a day, five days a week.
I’ve made some back room dealings with other close friends who will be making other forms of contribution to the site, so keep an eye out for a fancy logo and a fancy podcast with fancy music, featuring our favorites stories, read by Us – I mean, me. That was the Royal We sneaking in there.
It’s so easy, one of those little nodding bird thingies could do it, although the title would probably not make sense to any of us (all-inclusive us, that is).
This is a story that has haunted me for a while. Which is appropriate because it’s about a widower who is haunted by his late wife. Four or five years ago I tried to write it as a play. Basically, it was just one scene being played over and over, showing that the protagonist was stuck in a perpetual loop – of sadness! But as you can imagine, it was a little boring and a little depressing.
Back in the summer, I wrote a story in my composition notebook that was based on the same idea, but by the time I transcribed the thirty wide-ruled pages to fourteen typed pages, I was less than thrilled with it.
Then, about two weeks ago, I started thinking of this story again. But I was thinking of it in the present tense, urgently, I kept thinking, “Albert has forgotten. Albert has forgotten.” So I started a third iteration, this time as a flash story. I finished it last night, and no where in it do the words “Albert has forgotten” appear, but I like the way it reads, and I hope that, by sharing it here, it will no longer haunt me. Day at the Beach by Nick Faber
One of my flash pieces, “A Higher Love,” was published in the March issue of The Shine Journal, an online journal featuring “Exceptional Flash, Poetry, Art and Photography.”
It’s always nice to see my words published by someone else.
A drabble is a tiny story, exactly 100 words long, usually written in the science fiction or fantasy genre. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, UK press Beccon Publications published three Drabble anthologies featuring very short stories by such authors as Isaac Asimov and Neil Gaiman.
I wrote two drabbles for Sam’s Dot Press’s Drabbler magazine, specifically “Drabbler #13: Alien Magic.” Because Drabbler #13 was published on February 1, and I never heard one way or another from the magazine’s editor, The Boortean Ambassador, I am assuming that my drabbles were not published. One of them will probably remain unpublished, as it was a tongue-in-cheek literal interpretation of the issue’s theme.
One of my greatest shortcomings as a fiction writer has always been my limited vocabulary. The task of finding the right word is sometimes so arduous, so onerous, so burdensome that it’s just plain hard.
I tried various words-of-the-day services, but after a few days of collecting unread vocab emails, I decided to try a different approach to vocabulary building.
By mixing my love of language, theater, and moving images of myself, I developed Emotions on Demand, a video series that demonstrates the meanings of selected adjectives through dramatic performance.
I posted these videos one by one on my old blog, but I never found an effective way to display them all at once as a cohesive project.
Until now.
Click on the Emotions on Demand tab above, or click these words to start enhancing your vocabulary the Nick Faber way.
