At Portsmouth Writer’s Night Out I learned about NYC Midnight, a group that hosts timed writing competitions. Most importantly, they provide feedback. Eager to have a reason to write and get professional criticism, I checked it out. The next challenge was Micro Fiction: 100 words.
That’s not many words, and it’s not my specialty. But I need to be concise, so I entered. At midnight competitors receive a genre, an action and a word to include. For micro fiction, you get 24 hours to submit your story.
Below is a story I wrote for practice. I’ll post the piece I submitted separately.
~ Z
Genre: Western
Action: Rowing a boat
Word: Dry
Length: 100 words
One Hundred Miles
One hundred miles to go, he guessed. His hands had become the dry and splintered wooden oars. Delirious, he rowed a stolen dinghy the only place a man with nothing can go: home.
Would God forgive one last theft by his spared outlaw? Phantom gunshots and screams echoed off the canyon walls while he wondered if he was alive. Maybe Hell was a river that ran forever under endless sun fire. Maybe Hell was home.
At the water’s edge the first deer he had seen in weeks watched him. Hunting in the plateaus had been terrible. Gunless, he floated by.