For this week’s Fiction Workhorse, I am writing my one to five thousand story in my head. You’ll have to take my word for it, that’s it’s great. By the time it makes its way to the page, perhaps so-so.

This one-a-week is cracking the whip. While writing the last two stories, I stood in front of my laptop typing things like

This is pointless
Can’t think of anything. Anything anything

until something showed up. Five hundred words of that pep. I went to the page with a story in mind but no place to begin. I usually use my notebooks to write around possible starts for pieces, but I bypassed the slow writing for typed words. This week I haven’t opened my one-a-week file. Instead, I turn the radio off in the car and think about my characters. In my notebook, I jot names, places, possible plot. I am trying to write a story in my mind so that when I begin typing, I’m not at so many losses. There are chunks of the story I haven’t clarified yet. Big fat chunks. In a moment, I’ll return to my notebook and think through: the framing of the story, its scope.

This is a unique challenge, to let a story write itself in my mind, but only for so long because I’ve decided that I have to post it Thursday. The point is practice. Maybe something will come of a couple of these stories – or maybe these are just the laps I’m running.