Words You've Never Heard Of

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Short Story Submission

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A Lot

Always used as two words. Alot is not a word. CLICK HERE.

Twitter Prose

Chris Vognar: Twitter's character limit sparks new style of short-form writing
Sunday, June 27, 2010
By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News
EDITOR'S NOTE: After spending several months on Twitter, critic Chris Vognar is starting to think that those 140-character broadcasts might not represent the end of literature as we know it, as some have suggested.

I was once quick to mock Twitter as yet another sign of society's incredible shrinking attention span.

That was then. Now I find myself searching for the perfectly written tweet. And I'm not alone.

Twitter, the social media site founded in 2006, still has its share of haters. But more and more serious writers have embraced it as a viable forum for short writing. We're not talking about links, random shout-outs or celebrity spoutings, though those can all be fun. And you can keep the narcissistic navel-gazing that makes up much of the Twitterverse. I don't need to know what you did at the gym today, unless you're my personal trainer.

We're talking good, lean prose, the happy marriage between voice and format.

Look at it this way. Journalists count words to accommodate the news hole. Poets count syllables to make the meter sing just right.

Twitterers count characters: 140, including spaces. That's all you get for each tweet. So you make them count. This paragraph now has 138.

In Hamlet, the long-winded Polonius tells us that brevity is the soul of wit. He would have been great on Twitter in theory, if not practice.

"One hundred forty characters in certain contexts is quite a lot," says Roy Peter Clark (@RoyPeterClark), senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla., and author of the upcoming book The Glamour of Grammar. Clark, a relative Twitter newbie ("I'm not a Luddite, but I am the embodiment of an old-school late adopter"), points to the William Carlos Williams poem "The Red Wheelbarrow": "So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens."

Eighty-eight characters, and literary immortality.

The goal is economy of style, accomplished, like most good writing, through vigorous editing. If you tweet, you know the drill: You've got a spot-on observation, deep thought or humorous nugget to get off your chest and onto the screen. You type away and you end up with, say, 220 characters. So you whittle, and you whittle some more. You work in a contraction or two. If you value the integrity of your writing, you avoid cute rhyme abbreviations ("Gr8!").

Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) is also a Twitter mocker-turned-addict. "I vowed I would never become a Twit," he wrote in a recent post on his blog at rogerebert.com. That was more than 10,000 tweets and 169,000 followers ago. But he follows only 142 people on Twitter, few of them famous, all of whose writing he admires.

"In reading comments from readers on my blog, I find some of them waste words getting up to speed," he wrote in an e-mail message. "On the other hand, I follow a few Tweeters who are awesome in the content and meaning they can get into 140 characters. I'm bored by routine links. In an ideal world a Tweet would be worth reading even without its link."

Even narrative writers are getting in on the act. In Japan, the Twitter novel is all the rage: The writer serializes a narrative in a series of tweets, ending each one with a #twnovel tag.

Closer to home, in Austin, Sean Hill tweets under the name @veryshortstory. If you thought Hemingway's "The Killers" was brief, then take a swim through Hill's bite-size narratives: "The power went out. The elevator stopped. In the dark you told me your fears and cried. The next day you fired me to keep your secrets safe."

The end.

As a movie critic I've been known to punch out critical observations from my couch. A recent Taxi Driver post: "I think Travis Bickle just needed a hug. And better advice on first date options. And maybe a less efficient arms dealer." When I put on my music critic hat, I take concert notes on Twitter. It's easier and more practical than scrawling in a notebook, and it leaves a sort of running review of the show before I write the actual review the next day.

A Twitterer, like a poet, can assume a persona for satiric effect. In a recent Time column, James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) paid tribute to some of the great made-up Twitter voices, including @BPGlobalPR, a dead-on spoof of corporate damage control; and @feministhulk ("HULK BELIEVE IN THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY OF GENDERBENDING. ALSO, IS JUST COOL").

"There's something funny about forcing the diminutive form of Twitter on behemoths and supervillains, like putting a gorilla in a propeller beanie," writes Poniewozik.

But writerly tweets don't have to read like comedy routines. Mary Karr (@marykarrlit) is both a best-selling memoirist (The Liar's Club , Lit) and an award-winning poet. Her publisher recently asked the Texas native to start Twittering, but, as she told me over the phone, "I'm not using it to say, 'I'm gonna be at Place X, buy my book.' I'm trying to disseminate the lines of poetry that keep me from wanting to pound my head against the wall."

Karr uses Twitter to fuse her own sensibility and enthusiasms as a poet and literature professor with the words of her favorite poets. Here's a great Karr tweet: "Shelley on Keats, dead at 25: 'Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth.' Like earth's a bauble swinging from a chain, keeping time." (That's 139 characters, if you're counting).

Clark, Ebert, Poniewozik and Karr all agree on one thing: Long writing isn't necessarily good writing. And Twitter doesn't allow for bloat. I've found that paring down my tweets has made my prose leaner. I chop out more adverbs than I used to.

"Having that calculator of characters really drives you to certain strategies which are probably good for writing in general," Clark told me. "You're more inclined to use nouns and verbs rather than adjectives and adverbs. You're more inclined to make sure every single word works. If I had written what I'd just said I would take out the word 'single,' because it doesn't do any work."

No one argues that Twitter will replace the novel. The point is that good writers find ways to adapt to and play with available technology. That's been happening since before the printing press. Whether you're just tightening your prose or creating a new genre of fiction, Twitter is another fun tool for the toolbox.

Furlough Day

If you have plans to go to Timberglen or any other Dallas public library on Friday, July 2, 2010, well change your plans.

Using Italics and Underlining

An Introduction

We use italics (characters set in type that slants to the right) and underlining to distinguish certain words from others within the text. These typographical devices mean the same thing; therefore, it would be unusual to use both within the same text and it would certainly be unwise to italicize an underlined word. As word-processors and printers become more sophisticated and their published products more professional looking, italics are accepted by more and more instructors. Still, some instructors insist on underlines (probably because they went to school when italics were either technically difficult or practically unreadable). It is still a good idea to ask your instructor before using italics. (The APA Publication Manual continues to insist on underlining.) In this section, we will use italics only, but they should be considered interchangeable with underlined text.

These rules and suggestions do not apply to newspaper writing, which has its own set of regulations in this matter.

Italics do not include punctuation marks (end marks or parentheses, for instance) next to the words being italicized unless those punctuation marks are meant to be considered as part of what is being italicized: "Have you read Stephen King's Pet Semetary? (The question mark is not italicize here.) Also, do not italicize the apostrophe-s which creates the possessive of a title: "What is the Courant 's position on this issue?" You'll have to watch your word-processor on this, as most word-processors will try to italicize the entire word that you double-click on.


Titles
Generally, we italicize the titles of things that can stand by themselves. Thus we differentiate between the titles of novels and journals, say, and the titles of poems, short stories, articles, and episodes (for television shows). The titles of these shorter pieces would be surrounded with double quotation marks.

In writing the titles of newspapers, do not italicize the word the, even when it is part of the title (the New York Times), and do not italicize the name of the city in which the newspaper is published unless that name is part of the title: the Hartford Courant, but the London Times.


Other titles that we would italicize include the following:

•Journals and Magazines: Time, U.S. News and World Report, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review
Plays: Waiting for Godot, Long Day's Journey Into Night
•Long Musical Pieces: Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite (but "Waltz of the Flowers"), Schubert's Winterreise (but "Ave Maria"). For musical pieces named by type, number and key — Mozart's Divertimento in D major, Barber's Cello Sonata Op. 6 — we use neither italics nor quotation marks.
•Cinema: Slingblade, Shine, The Invisible Man
•Television and Radio Programs: Dateline, Seinfeld, Fresh Air, Car Talk
•Artworks: the Venus de Milo, Whistler's The Artist's Mother
•Famous Speeches: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Washington's Second Inaugural Address (when that is the actual title of the speech)
•Long Poems (that are extensive enough to appear in a book by themselves): Longfellow's Evangeline, Milton's Paradise Lost, Whitman's Leaves of Grass
Pamphlets: New Developments in AIDS Research
We do not italicize the titles of long sacred works: the Bible, the Koran. Nor do we italicize the titles of books of the Bible: Genesis, Revelation, 1 Corinthians.

When an exclamation mark or question mark is part of a title, make sure that that mark is italicized along with the title,

My favorite book is Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
I love Dr. Suess's Oh, the Places You'll Go!
(Do not add an additional period to end such sentences.) If the end mark is not part of the title, but is added to indicate a question or exclamation, do not italicize that mark.

Did you enjoy Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain?

Names of Vehicles
Challenger
Titanic
Orient Express
U.S.S. Eisenhower (Don't italicize the U.S.S.)
H.M.S. Pinafore (Don't italicize the H.M.S. when you're talking about the ship. If you're talking about the light opera, then it's part of the title, H.M.S. Pinafore.)
We don't italicize names of vehicles that are brand names: Ford Explorer, Corvette, Nissan Pathfinder, Boeing 747.

Foreign Words or Phrases
If a word or phrase has become so widely used and understood that it has become part of the English language — such as the French "bon voyage" or the abbreviation for the latin et cetera, "etc." — we would not italicize it. Often this becomes a matter of private judgment and context. For instance, whether you italicize the Italian sotto voce depends largely on your audience and your subject matter.
Words as Words
Examples:

The word basically is often unnecessary and should be removed.
There were four and's and one therefore in that last sentence. (Notice that the apostrophe-s, used to create the plural of the word-as-word and, is not italicized. See the section on Plurals for additional help.)
She defines ambiguity in a positive way, as the ability of a word to mean more than one thing at the same time.

For Emphasis
Note: It is important not to overdo the use of italics to emphasize words. After a while, it loses its effect and the language starts to sound like something out of a comic book.

I really don't care what you think! (Notice that just about any word in that sentence could have been italicized, depending on how the person said the sentence.)

These rules do not apply to newspaper writing.

Words as Reproduced Sounds
Grrr! went the bear. (But you would say "the bear growled" because growled reports the nature of the sound but doesn't try to reproduce it. Thus the bees buzz but go bzzzz and dogs bark woof!)
His head hit the stairs, kathunk!
Frequently, mimetically produced sounds are also accompanied by exclamation marks.

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The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation. If you feel we have provided something of value and wish to show your appreciation, you can assist the College and its students with a tax-deductible contribution.

For more about giving to Capital, write to CCC Foundation, 950 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103. Phone (860) 906-5102 or email: jmcnamara@ccc.commnet.edu. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Comma Use

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

What this handout is about:
This handout offers seven easy steps to becoming a comma superhero.

Commas, commas, and more commas
Commas help your reader figure out which words go together in a sentence and which parts of your sentences are most important. Using commas incorrectly may confuse the reader, signal ignorance of writing rules, or indicate carelessness. Although using commas correctly may seem mysterious, it can be easy if you follow a few guidelines.

Beware of popular myths of comma usage:

MYTH: Long sentences need a comma. A really long sentence may be perfectly correct without commas. The length of a sentence does not determine whether you need a comma.

MYTH: You should add a comma wherever you pause. Where you pause or breathe in a sentence does not reliably indicate where a comma belongs. Different readers pause or breathe in different places.

MYTH: Commas are so mysterious that it's impossible to figure out where they belong! Some rules are flexible, but most of the time, commas belong in very predictable places. You can learn to identify many of those places using the tips in this handout.

You probably already know at least one of the following guidelines and just have to practice the others. These guidelines are basically all you need to know; if you learn them once, you’re set for most situations.

1. Introductory bits (small-medium-large)
Setting off introductory words, phrases, or clauses with a comma lets the reader know that the main subject and main verb of the sentence come later. There are basically three kinds of introductory bits: small, medium, and large ones. No matter what size they are, an introductory bit cannot stand alone as a complete thought. It simply introduces the main subject and verb.

There are small (just one word) introductory bits:

Generally, extraterrestrials are friendly and helpful.

Moreover, some will knit booties for you if you ask nicely.

There are medium introductory bits. Often these are two- to four-word prepositional phrases or brief -ing and -ed phrases:

In fact, Godzilla is just a misunderstood teen lizard of giant proportions.

Throughout his early life, he felt a strong affinity with a playful dolphin named Flipper.

Frankly speaking, Godzilla wanted to play the same kinds of roles that Flipper was given.

Dissatisfied with destruction, he was hoping to frolick in the waves with his Hollywood friends.

There are large introductory bits (more than 4 words). You can often spot these by looking for key words/groups such as although, if, as, in order to, and when:

If you discover that you feel nauseated, then you know you’ve tried my Clam Surprise.

As far as I am concerned, it is the best dish for dispatching unwanted guests.

2. FANBOYS
FANBOYS is a handy mnemonic device for remembering the coordinating conjunctions: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. These words function as connectors. They can connect words, phrases, and clauses, like this:

Words: I am almost dressed and ready.

Phrases: My socks are in the living room or under my bed.

Clauses: They smell really bad, so they will be easy to find.

Notice the comma in the final example. You should always have a comma before FANBOYS that join two independent clauses (two subjects and two verbs that make up two complete thoughts). Look carefully at the next two sentences to see two independent clauses separated by comma + FANBOYS.

If you do not have two subjects and two verbs separated by the FANBOYS, you do not need to insert the comma before the FANBOYS. In other words, if the second grouping of words isn’t a complete thought, don’t use a comma. Try reading the words after FANBOYS all by themselves. Do they make a complete thought?

You can read your own writing in the same way. Read what comes after FANBOYS all by itself. If it's a complete thought, you need a comma. If not, you don't.

3. The dreaded comma splice
If you don’t have FANBOYS between the two complete and separate thoughts, using a comma alone causes a "comma splice" or "fused sentence" (some instructors may call it a run-on). Some readers (especially professors) will think of this as a serious error.

BAD: My hamster loved to play, I gave him a hula-hoop.

ALSO BAD: You wore a lovely hat, it was your only defense.

To fix these comma splices, you can do one of four simple things: just add FANBOYS, change the comma to a semicolon, make each clause a separate sentence, or add a subordinator (a word like because, while, although, if, when, since, etc.)

GOOD: You wore a lovely hat, for it was your only defense.

STILL GOOD: You wore a lovely hat. It was your only defense.

TOTALLY GOOD: You wore a lovely hat because it was your only defense.

4. FANBOY fakers
However, therefore, moreover, and other words like them are not FANBOYS (they are called conjunctive adverbs). They go between two complete thoughts, just like FANBOYS, but they take different punctuation. Why? Who cares? You just need to recognize that they are not FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so—remember?), and you'll make the right choice.

When you want to use one of these words, you have two good choices. Check to see if you have a complete thought on both sides of the "conjunctive adverb." If you do, then you can use a period to make two sentences, or you can use a semicolon after the first complete thought. Either way, you'll use a comma after the faker in the second complete thought. Notice the subtle differences in punctuation here:

GOOD: Basketball is my favorite sport. However, table tennis is where I excel.

ALSO GOOD: Basketball is my favorite sport; however, table tennis is where I excel.

BAD: Basketball is my favorite sport, however table tennis is where I excel.

ALSO BAD: Basketball is my favorite sport, however, table tennis is where I excel.

5. X,Y, and Z
Put commas between items in a list. When giving a short and simple list of things in a sentence, the last comma (right before the conjunction–usually and or or) is optional, but it is never wrong. If the items in the list are longer and more complicated, you should always place a final comma before the conjunction.

EITHER: You can buy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles.
OR: You can buy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles.

BUT ALWAYS: A good student listens to his teachers without yawning, reads once in a while, and writes papers before they are due.

6. Describers
If you have two or more adjectives (words that describe) that are not joined by a conjunction (usually and) and both/all adjectives modify the same word, put a comma between them.

He was a bashful, dopey, sleepy dwarf.

The frothy, radiant princess kissed the putrid, vile frog.

7. Interrupters

Two commas can be used to set off additional information that appears within the sentence but is separate from the primary subject and verb of the sentence. These commas help your reader figure out your main point by telling him or her that the words within the commas are not necessary to understand the rest of the sentence. In other words, you should be able to take out the section framed by commas and still have a complete and clear sentence.

Bob Mills, a sophomore from Raleigh, was the only North Carolina native at the Japanese food festival in Cary.

Aaron thought he could see the future, not the past, in the wrinkles on his skin.

My chemistry book, which weighs about 100 pounds, has some really great examples.

To see if you need commas around an interrupter, try taking the interrupter out of the sentence completely. If the sentence is still clear without the interrupter, then you probably need the commas.

Blockade Billy

It's about a former Major League Baseball catcher who has all of his big league records expunged. This novella is only 92 pages long. It helps to know baseball terms. Stephen King writes about something other than horror. Hee-hee.

John Grisham Quote

"I love small-town obituaries because they print the full name of the deceased. And you can use that name in your work without getting sued, because they're dead. I have this thing with lawsuits."

Television Screenwriting

We've never had a screenwriter or playwright in our group, but I'm sure they would be welcome. It would be interesting to see their technique. The following unquoted comments come from Tom Maurstad, media critic for The Dallas Morning News. The quotes come from Matt Nix, creator of broadcast TV's The Good Guys, currently shooting on location in Dallas.

Broadcast shows are plot-driven, and cable shows are character-driven; broadcast shows are episodic, and cable shows are serialized. What those divisions have quickly boiled down to is a coded way of saying cable is good, and broadcast is bad, formulaic entertainment.

"I like plot, I like the mechanics of TV shows when they are done well. I want plot and character," Nix says. "The question I always ask is: 'Would the story happen if these characters weren't in it?'

"A writer-friend of mine came up with a good example: A guy has a gun pointed at him. If he begs for his life, that's plot-driven. If he puts his mouth over the gun and stares up at the person holding it, that's character-driven."

Self-Publishing

This originally appeared in The Dallas Morning News.

Virginia Heffernan: Today, self-publishing is respectable

Saturday, May 22, 2010

I love out-there theories and the people who are seized by them. I'm a sitting duck for crackpots. Maybe that's why I like the Web.

But even those of us who pride ourselves on never showing skepticism arrive at a crossroads sometimes. Should I really sacrifice 20 minutes of my life to hear out this particular rant (about Google, Obama, the Fed) or politely back away from the ranter? Well, you really sound as if you're on to something, sir!

In analog times, one sign that it was time to retreat was if a big talker, having declared himself an author, produced his "book" and something about the book just wasn't ... booky. Maybe the pages carried a whiff of the Xerox or mimeograph machine. Or maybe the volume – about Atlantis or Easter Island – looked too good, with engraved letters, staid cover, no dust jacket. After a casual examination of the spine or the title page, realization would dawn: self-published.

In this time of Twitter feeds and self-designed Snapfish albums and personal YouTube channels, it's hard to remember the stigma that once attached to self-publishing. But it was very real.

By contrast, to have a book legitimately produced by a publishing house in the 20th century was not just to have copies of your work bound between smart-looking covers. It was also metaphysical: You had been chosen, made intelligible and harmonious by editors and finally rendered eligible, thanks to the magic that turns a manuscript into a book, for canonization and immortality. You were no longer a kid with a spiral notebook and a sonnet cycle about Sixth Avenue; you were an author, and even if you never saw a dime in royalties, no one could ever dismiss you again as an oddball.

But times have changed, and radically. Last year, according to the Bowker bibliographic company, 764,448 titles were produced by self-publishers and so-called microniche publishers. (A microniche, I imagine, is a shade bigger than a self.) This is up an astonishing 181 percent from the previous year. Compare this enormous figure with the number of so-called traditional titles – books with the imprimatur of places like Random House – published that same year: a mere 288,355 (down from 289,729 the year before). Book publishing is simply becoming self-publishing.

And self-published books are not just winning in terms of numbers but also making up ground in cachet. As has happened with other media in this heyday of user-generated content, last century's logic has been turned on its head: small and crafty can beat big and branded. As IndieReader, an online source for self-published books, puts it, "Think of these books like handmade goods, produced in small numbers, instead of the mass-marketed stuff you'd find at a superstore."

Cheap, digital-publishing technology – especially print-on-demand options, which let individual buyers essentially commission copies of books – has been a godsend to writers without agents or footholds at traditional publishing houses.

It has also been a quiet godsend to literary history. Books that defy traditional classification now appear in print, and reprints of public-domain titles account for the biggest category of self-published books. (There are more reprints published than traditional books.)

Outfits like BiblioBazaar (which aims to "bring back the canon of global out-of-print literature and books") and Kessinger Publishing ("to publish and preserve thousands of rare, scarce and out-of-print books") style themselves as a kind of public trust, while Amazon's CreateSpace ("self-publish and distribute your book"), Lulu.com ("bringing a bigger audience to you"), as well as several imprints of Author Solutions ("Mr. Gutenberg would be proud") see themselves as heroically amplifying and even monetizing independent voices. IndieReader reminds us that luminaries like Gertrude Stein, Anaïs Nin and Edgar Allan Poe self-published books.

Self-published books also look great these days – altogether booky. This is no trivial matter. CreateSpace makes it clear that any book it publishes for you will have a full-color cover, a professional-quality binding and an ISBN. Looks just like the real thing. And perhaps it is the real thing. The last-century notion that a book was a writer's badge of having crossed over – from eccentricity to acceptance – may be obsolete. Perhaps a book is just a cluster of symbols, printed and bound and distributed, or not.

But if everyone is carrying official-looking volumes with his name on them, how do I find the old-fashioned crackpots? As I explore indie-publishing sites, I do this by searching by familiar subjects. And there they are: Bacon's Shakespeare: Facts Pointing to Francis Bacon as Author of the Shakespeare Poems and Plays; The Jim Morrison Myth. And someone at IndieReader directed me to a wondrously weird memoir by Robert McKnight: The Golden Years ... The Florida Legislature, '70s and '80s.

Vintage kookery. Hurray. Some things never change.

Virginia Heffernan's "The Medium" collumn appears in The New York Times Magazine.

E-Books Rewrite Bookselling

The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2010

NEW YORK—In the massive new Barnes & Noble superstore on Manhattan's Upper East Side, generous display space is devoted to baby blankets, Art Deco flight clocks, stationery and adult games like Risk and Stratego.

The eclectic merchandise, which has nothing to do with books, may be a glimpse into the future of Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation's largest book chain.

For 40 years, Barnes & Noble has dominated bookstore retailing. In the 1970s it revolutionized publishing by championing discount hardcover best sellers. In the 1990s, it helped pioneer book superstores with selections so vast that they put many independent bookstores out of business.

Today it boasts 1,362 stores, including 719 superstores with 18.8 million square feet of retail space—the equivalent of 13 Yankee Stadiums.

But the digital revolution sweeping the media world is rewriting the rules of the book industry, upending the established players which have dominated for decades. Electronic books are still in their infancy, comprising an estimated 3% to 5% of the market today. But they are fast accelerating the decline of physical books, forcing retailers, publishers, authors and agents to reinvent their business models or be painfully crippled.

"By the end of 2012, digital books will be 20% to 25% of unit sales, and that's on the conservative side," predicts Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of the Idea Logical Co., publishing consultants. "Add in another 25% of units sold online, and roughly half of all unit sales will be on the Internet."

For the full story, CLICK HERE.

Dallas Writers CAMP

READ ALL ABOUT IT.

Doesn't say where it's held.

Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon?

The following article appeared in The Dallas Morning News, June 29, 2008.

Paul Collins: Has modern life killed the semicolon?

When The Times of London reported in 1837 on two University of Paris law professors dueling with swords, the dispute wasn't over the fine points of the Napoleonic Code. It was over the point-virgule: the semicolon. "The one who contended that the passage in question ought to be concluded by a semicolon was wounded in the arm," noted The Times. "His adversary maintained that it should be a colon."

French passions over the semicolon are running high once again, after an online publication's April Fool's hoax claimed that the government planned to demand "at least three semicolons per page in official administrative documents."

French commentators blame the semicolon's decline on everything from "the modern need for speed" to the corrupting influence of English and its short, declarative sentences. It's a charge leveled for years stateside, too.

Has modern life killed the semicolon?

The semicolon has a remarkable lineage: Ancient Greeks used it as a question mark; and after classical scholar and master printer Aldus Manutius revived it in a 1494 font set, semicolons slowly spread across Europe. Though London first saw semicolons appear in a 1568 chess guide, Shakespeare grew up in an era that still scarcely recognized them; some of his Folio typesetters in 1623, though, were clearly converts.

Back then, the semicolon wasn't for interrogation or relating clauses; punctuation was still largely taught around oratorical pauses. The 1737 guide Bibliotheca Technologica recognizes "The comma (,) which stops the voice while you tell [count] one. The Semicolon (;) pauseth while you tell two. The Colon (:) while you tell three; and then period, or full stop (.) while you tell four."

Lacking standards for how punctuation shades the meaning of sentences – and not just their oration – 18th-century writers went berserk with the catchall mark.

But the chaos couldn't last: By the 1793 New Guide to the English Tongue, modern usage peeks through – "Its chief Use is in distinguishing Contraries, and frequent Division."

Semicolons hit a speed bump with Romanticism's craze for dashes, for words that practically spasmed off the page. Take this sample from the 1814 poem "The Orphans": "Dead – dead – quite dead – and pale – oh! – oh!"

By 1865, grammarian Justin Brenan could boast of "the rejection of the eternal semicolons of our ancestors."

1865? But surely that's a century off: Isn't modern life to blame?

Not exactly: From the 1850s onward, it's virtually impossible to find anyone claiming a prevalence of semicolons in writing. We now lived, complained a critic in 1854, in a "fast era" that neglected punctuation.

Indeed, a 1995 study tallying punctuation in period texts found a stunning drop in semicolon usage between the 18th and 19th centuries, from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7.

Researcher Paul Bruthiaux notes that the steepest semicolon drop-off came in the mid-19th century. Technology is a leading suspect in rapid aesthetic shifts, so consider what debuted in the 1850s that might radically change language usage: the telegraph.

Perusing telegraph manuals reveals that Morse code is to the semicolon what weedkiller is to the dandelion. Punctuation was charged at the same rate as words, and their high price – trans-Atlantic cables originally cost a still-shocking $5 per word – meant that short, punchy lines with minimal punctuation were necessary among businessmen and journalists.

By the new century, simplified punctuation migrated into textbooks; one 1903 guide recommended that "boys and girls ... should as a rule use a period when they are tempted to use a semicolon."

Harper's could decry the semicolon as "almost forgotten among proofreaders" in a 1924 article titled "Our Passion for Haste." So, too, in 1943, when The Times editorialized against "the war that is being waged in some quarters on the semicolon."

The semicolon has spent the last century as a fussbudget mark. Somerset Maugham and George Orwell disdained it; Kurt Vonnegut once informed a Tufts University crowd that "all they do is show that you've been to college."

Semicolons do have some genuine shortcomings; Slate's founding editor, Michael Kinsley, once noted to the Financial Times that "the most common abuse of the semicolon, at least in journalism, is to imply a relationship between two statements without having to make clear what that relationship is."

Yet semicolons serve a unique function, so it's tempting to think some writers will always cling to them.

When grading undergrad final papers recently, I found a near-absence of semicolons, save for one paper with cadenced pauses and carefully cantilevered clauses that gracefully stacked upon one another, Jenga-like, without ever quite toppling. Yet English was not this student's first language.

He was an exchange student – from France.


Paul Collins teaches nonfiction at Portland State University. His e-mail address is pcollins@ pdx.edu. A version of this essay first appeared at Slate.com.

Opening Lines

The first line of a short story is very important. A good one can hook the reader and make them want to read on. A weak first line and they might pass your story by.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – from “Neuromancer”

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." – from “1984”

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. – from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." – from “The Metamorphosis

"It was the day my Grandmother exploded." – attributed to “The Crow”

This one was brought to my attention by Writeous:
"The last camel died at noon." - from "The Key to Rebecca"

This one is mine:
It was 9:00 am and he was on his third scotch and water.

Blood Drive

Thursday night, in addition to our normal critiquing of members' submissions, we discussed the story Blood Drive, part of John Grisham's latest book, a collection of short stories he has written. Many asked when he wrote them, wondering if he had been sitting on them for some time and implying that it was not polished. When asked what grade they would give it if they were professors, C and C+ were the two responses.

The story is a fairly simple one of three young men, ages 21 to 27, taking a road trip from Ford County, Mississippi, to Memphis to donate blood for a friend, Bailey, who was in the hospital due to a construction site accident. During the trip they drink beer and make pits stops, one an integral part of the story. Once they arrive in Memphis they stop at a strip club. Finally they head to a hospital, not knowing which of the seven in the city their friend is in. And though two of the three had gone to school with Bailey, they weren't sure if that was his first or last name. Odd.

Apropos title.

JOHN GRISHAM

In Cold Blood

It begins:
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

Later:
"It doesn't make sense. I mean what happened. It had nothing to do with the Clutters. They never hurt me. They just happened to be there. I thought Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman... I thought so right up to the time I cut his throat."

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Terms Needing Termination

From The Dallas Morning News, May 11, 2010. Mark Cuban on Ross Perot Jr.

"What I do know is that being in business with Ross Perot is one of the worst experiences of my business life," Cuban said. "He could care less about Mavs fans. He could care less about winning. ... The other partners have no problem with how the team is run. They want to win as badly as I do."

Hey Mark. The term is couldn't care less.

For the full story CLICK HERE.

Those Three Minute Fiction Stories

CLICK HERE. Links to the stories are on the right.

My Writing Process

Outside of our Writers' Workshop, there are only two short stories that I share with friends. About the only question I receive from them is how do I come up with stories. The answer given is if I knew I'd write a book about it. But the truth is it comes from various sources. Events in my life help mold certain situations, but not the story. I'm constantly thinking of concepts. They usually come from conversations or newspaper articles. Then I build on that idea. Most days I walk, perhaps up to two miles. That clears my head and gives me time to create a basic plot. The next step is to put those thoughts into writing. This is done is cursive on cheap notebook paper. The computer is not employed until the title is decided upon.

A new paragraph is warranted here to emphasize that the ending is not known at this time. Usually.

Character development comes next. Sometimes dialog is used to express this. Other times it is narrative. Some writers place great importance on the characters' looks. For some reason I don't really care whether or not the characters have blond hair or black, blue eyes or brown. I'd rather leave that up to the readers' imaginations. It's fun however to make a least one character quirky. I like quirky.

I feel very strongly about location. All in our group live in Dallas or the surrounding cities. But there is really no reason to use Dallas as the location unless the story involves the Cowboys or the Kennedy assassination. I need a reason to name a city, or else it's just "the city." It can take place in Hollywood if it's about a movie star or D.C. if it involves the federal government. Small towns however are different. I like to make up their names. One of my stories ended in Pie Corner, Oklahoma. Now Mesquite, Texas, is a different animal. It has a great name and you don't feel guilty making fun of the place.

Endings can be tough. I don't enjoy knowing the ending of a story when I begin writing it. But that's just me. It's sort of like being a kid and knowing on December 20th what Santa will bring you for Christmas. Again, my daily walks help. Readers expect answers. On one occasion (Time, Cotton) I didn't provide the answer.

I enjoy being critiqued. It makes me a better writer. I don't need to be told if a story is good or not. I know.

• • • • •

Addendum: Some writers set aside 2-4 hours daily in which to write. I tend to get on a roll. Once some thoughts are assembled I may start early on a Sunday afternoon and write into the night. And if the ideas keep rolling in I'll continue Monday night. And Tuesday night. And

Story Idea

Write something that comes to mind after looking at the cartoon below.

Restaurant Review

Hey, I was bored one night so I wrote this.


J’s Breakfast & Burgers

Retro baby! This place is analog in a digital world but the wait staff can chew gum and call you ‘honey’ at the same time. J’s is now in its 29th year and its 2nd coat of paint. The front door is unlocked 24/7/364. If the key can be found they’re closed on Christmas. Being in Addison, the Marlboro Man is a regular. Seating for 42 in the front coffin section, 36 in the non-coughing section plus 6 at the counter pleases the fire marshal. Husky-voiced night shift manager/waitress Dorothy has been there the last 15 of her 64 years. Her cook has been there 24. This is where the bar habitués go after last call on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Breakfast and lunch are busy. During supper time feel free to cut the cheese because no other diners are there. J’s has no web site and they think Wi-Fi is some kind of knock-knock joke. The last cigarette machine in Dallas County is behind booth #1. There’s an 8-liner (it pays off in Walmart gift cards), juke box (the volume is turned down at 5:00 am) and (take a camera) an honest-to-goodness working pay phone complete with an honest-to-goodness working telephone book. Don’t ask them to change the channel on the lone TV set because someone walked off with the remote years ago. Before the question arises, it’s a black and white.

Coffee: Community brand served in a ceramic mug with 3-4 warm ups for a buck thirty-five. I take mine black. No cream, no sugar. Ask for a latte. Go ahead. I dare you.

Breakfast: Try the 1x4 which is one each pancake, egg, bacon strip and sausage link. Or try the 2x4 which is pretty much what you think it is. I like the two egg omelet. A popular choice is breakfast tacos (2) which costs $5.00 but come with free hash browns. Everything is available à la carte. Add a pork chop if you wish. Salsa for the scrambled will make you sweat and Tabasco and Cholula are on every table. Served 24 hours.

Lunch: Burgers baby. $5.50 and up. Make it yellow-topped for 40¢ more. There’s also chicken fried steak, T-bone steak, rib eye steak and hamburger steak plus old school sandwiches and salads. Served 24 hours.

Dessert: Home baked chocolate pie is $2.40 per slice. It’s big enough to share which saves time for the dishwasher who is also the cook and restroom attendant. You’re out of luck if you’ve just had your tonsils taken out because there is no Blue Bell here.

Tuesday Special: Any burger plus Idahos and a drink is just $5.95.

Tip: $1.00 per person.

J’s accepts Visa, MasterCard and, for the 3 people who still have them, Discover Card. If you try to use Amex or Diners Club cards, well, that’s too retro even for this place.

At J’s it’s hard to find any bells and whistles but if you can find a dial tone you can call 972-239-7619 and your order will be ready to go when you get there. In Styrofoam, baby.

14925 Midway Road, one traffic light south of Belt Line on the sunset side.

The Scarlet Letter

Do not read if you are offended by foul language. The comments below were found on the Internet. They are about the book "The Scarlet Letter." I happen to agree with each and every one of them.

A horrific torture device devised by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. Since then, English teachers across America have been using it to mentally maim their students, as this book can cause brain anuerisms and seizures within five minutes of reading. The only *human being* that has ever finished the book without damaging himself is Chuck Norris.

In Guantanamo Bay, the interrogators utilize the Scarlet Letter as a highly effective extraction tool.

The reason why the national high school drop out rate is so high. The book borders on the topics of guilt, religion, and fucking. Most English teachers percieve this book to be a literary treasure chest, hence why the English department is usually targeted first when students go on homicidal rampages.

Teacher: I love the Scarlet Letter, yet I hate you so I'd like you to write an essay explaining the main theme of the sto-...
Student: Uh, ma'm?
Teacher: Yes miste-...
Student: Blow me.

Most... boring... book... ever, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I guarantee you, you won't be able to stay interested long enough to read just five sentences of this piece of shit. It's nothing but paragraphs that are one page long, talking about a bunch of crap that you can't understand, which leaves you thinking "ok.. now where the hell is all the fun stuff?"

"In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France." - Passage from The Scarlet Letter.
Seriously.. does that sound interesting to you?

A horrible book written by American author Nathaninel Hawthorne. One is forced to ask, why is this book considered in any way, shape or form, a good book, especially when one considers that at the same time, geniuses such as Fyodor Dostievsky were writing their works. Even in American literature of the time one can take such examples as Thoreau and Emerson and wonder, why on earth is this book considered good?

One of the worst books ever is the definition of THe Scarlet Letter.

A famous book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne that deals with Puritan beliefs. The main character is a woman named Hester who has a baby, is accused of adultry, and is forced to wear a red letter, "A" on her clothes, so everyone in the town knows she's a skank. Highschoolers are forced to read this book. Only God knows why. At first, the book seams alright. The plot seams interesting enough, because it deals with sex and suspence, but when you start reading it you have to keep your eyes open with clothes pins to avoid falling asleep. Also known as, the most overrated and dissapointing book of all time.

I thought that reading The Scarlet Letter would be interesting, but once I actually started reading the book it made me want to gauge my eyes out with a spork and smear my eyeball blood all over Nathaniel Hawthorne. What the hell was my English teacher smoking when he read this book and thought it was a masterpiece?

A boring book most highschoolers are forced to read. Written in the 1700's, and is completely irrelevant now.

For a book that's basically about fucking, this thing sucks!

The Scarlet Letter is the worst fricken book ever that our dumbass teachers make us read because they are retarded and like ruining our lives.

And my favorite, because I wrote it, is: They should Fahrenheit 451 this book.

BTW, Timberglen has 1 copy of this book. The Dallas Public Library has 21. Find out how many are checked out.

LOOK HERE! YOU CAN ACTUALLY BUY COFFEE MUGS AND STUFF.

Why I Don't Like Poetry

A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns

Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

Will someone please explain to me why he's famous?

Story Idea

Start here:

"Where's the salt I requested?" I asked the man who delivered my supper.

"The dietician says salt is bad for your health. She doesn't allow it here."

Jeez Louise, I know salt's bad for your health. But I wanted it anyway. I wanted it on the steak, the ketchup I'm going to put on that steak, the new potatoes, the macaroni and cheese, the jalapeño cornbread, the iced tea, the vanilla ice cream, and even the peach cobbler. This is, after all, my last meal. In twelve hours I'll be executed for a murder I didn't commit. And she has the gall to tell me salt is bad for my health.

"And the warden won't let me smoke a cigarette because he's afraid I'll become addicted."

Bad Writing

This is the first paragraph from an article that ran in The Dallas Morning News on May 1, 2010. It was written by AP reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra.

BAGHDAD – Leery of using a mobile phone, the militant tasked with directing some of Baghdad's deadliest recent bombings would get his orders from the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq by meeting a go-between near a grocery store named Mr. Milk.

A grocery store named Mr. Milk? How quaint. I don't think that's the name of the store.

Full article.

Soldiers' Pay

The air was sweet with fresh-sawed lumber and they walked through a pale yellow city of symmetrical stacked planks. a continuous line of negroes carried boards up a cleated incline like a chicken run into a freight car and flung them clashing to the floor, under the eye of an informally clad white man who reclined easily upon a lumber pile, chewing indolent tobacco. He watched them with interest as they passed, following the faint wagon road.
Chapter IV, 4

Mahon liked music; so Mrs. Worthington sent her car for them. Mrs. Worthington lived in a large, beautiful old house which her husband, conveniently dead, had bequeathed, with a colorless male cousin who had false teeth and no occupation that anyone knew of, to her. The male cousin's articulation was bad (he had been struck in the mouth with an ax in a dice game in Cuba during the Spanish-American War): perhaps this was why he did nothing.
Chapter V, 7)

Jones looked up with his customary phlegmatic calm, then he rose, lazily courteous. She watched him narrowly with the terror-sharpened cunning of an animal, but his face and manner told nothing.
Chapter VI, 1

The sentries in her blood lay down, but they lay down near the ramparts with their arms in their hands, waiting the alarm, the inevitable stand-to, and they sat clasped in the vaguely gleamed twilight of the room, Jones a fat Mirandola in a chaste Platonic nympholepsy, a religio-sentimental orgy in gray tweed, shaping an insincere, fleeting articulation of damp clay to an old imperishable desire, building himself a papier mâché Virgin: and Cecily Saunders wondering what, how much he had heard, frightened and determined.
Chapter VI, 2)

"Soldiers' Pay" was William Faulkner's first novel, written while he lived in New Orleans and published in 1926.

Simile

The security guard at Timberglen is as annoying as a Netflix pop-up ad.

Simile.

Writer's Digest Best Writing Communities

2009 LIST OF WEBSITES

2008 LIST OF WEBSITES

Three Minute Fiction Round Three Winner

For the third round of our contest, we asked you to send us original works of fiction inspired by [the above] photograph.

Please Read
by Rhonda Strickland

In Tucson, we found the train-hopping kids, and went with them to New York City. I was 15 and had never been out of Arizona. That summer, I'd learned to eat from Dumpsters, carry a knife in my pocket and sleep with my backpack chained to my waist. My girlfriend Sarah was scared to try, but when she saw I'd go without her, she came. New Mexico and Texas floated past, framed in the open rail car door. We slept under a Baton Rouge bridge, partied in New Orleans, changed trains in Atlanta. Sarah was liking this now. At Penn Station, we stepped outside, and the cold stung our skin. We stood there and blinked. The other kids headed round back of a coffee shop to Dumpster dive. Sarah called to me. I shook my head, and she went. I knew she'd bring back something — a stale doughnut, a still-warm half-cup of coffee. In the shop window, I studied my reflection. Wild red hair stuck out from knots Sarah couldn't untangle with her broken comb. My eyes seemed too large and staring. My beard still looked strange. I thought of Phoenix. I'd left home over a month ago, telling no one. I hugged myself, shivering. We'd have to find coats, sweaters. I stopped seeing myself, and looked through the glass, at a warm table with a spread-open newspaper, carelessly left behind. The pages fluttered each time a customer opened the door and went in. Sarah came up beside me, handed over a half-eaten apple. She said, "No coffee." Her hands were blue. She followed my gaze. "We'll get newspapers tonight." She meant for sleeping. Old papers were everywhere, littering the ground under bridges, inside doorways, beside creeks and riverbeds. We stuffed our clothes and covered ourselves when it rained. She said, "Come on, Ben," but I couldn't stop looking at the newspaper, how people walked past, ruffling the pages, not noticing. The paper danced in the draft they created, and inched across the table, moving close to the edge. Sarah tugged my arm and looked anxiously at the Tucson kids rounding a corner, searching for food. I didn't know how to explain to Sarah I wanted this paper. I wasn't thinking of Phoenix anymore, of my home and my parents. I wanted to fold this newspaper shut with a crease, protect it from the gray sooty day, keep it from falling to the floor, where it would soon get covered in black shoe prints. But I could not get myself to go in, take it from the table. In its perfect frame of polished wood and gleaming glass, lit by lamps and the glowing smiles of people sipping coffee from steaming china cups, I knew the paper wasn't mine.

459 words

4th Dallas International Book Fair

Short Story Participants:
Sloan Anderson – “The Power of Five”
Barbara Blanks – “Wither, Thou Goest”
Linda Burden – “The Dutiful Wife”
Donald Card – “The Nativity of the First Dragon”
Mei – Wan Chang – “Os Is My Name”
Lori Rader Day – “The Calamities”
Ronnie Edwards – “The One and Only”
Melanie Forbes-Scott – “The Winds of Change”
Shirley Franklin – “A Day of Fun”
Shirley Franklin – “A Bestowal of His Grace”
Barbara Graettinger – “Toots and the One Legged Rooster”
Aaron Graham – “Loosing Sanity”
Ken Grigg – “Breakfast of Biscuits and Gravy”
Maureen Jones – “A Summer Job”
Leoná – “I Just Didn’t Know”
Tonya Lewis – “Love Lost”
Mary Scarborough – “It Writes Itself”
Rebeca Shidlofsky – “The Piano”
Mamatha Vaddi Sparks – “The Palestinian Dishwasher”
Kena Sosa – “Citizen Arrest”
Marilyn Stacy – “Mark Twain's Words Live On”
Edward Stone – “Appointment”
Edward Stone – “Claim Jumper”
Paul J. Verheyden – “Live to Fight Another Day”
Troy D Young – “A Killing Wind”

LINK

Catch 22

"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"
Yossarian explains to his friend Clevinger why he is not crazy for thinking people are trying to kill him, Chapter 2: Clevinger.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
Doc Daneeka explains why he cannot ground Yossarian or Orr due to insanity, Chapter 5: Chief White Halfoat.

"Catch-22...says you've always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to."
"But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions."
"But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you."
Doc Daneeka reveals another clause of Catch-22 to Yossarian, Chapter 6: Hungry Joe.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Of Major Major, with whom it had been all three. Chapter 9: Major Major Major Major.

With a little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway.
Of Major Major. Chapter 9: Major Major Major Major.

Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
Sergeant Towser to Appleby. Chapter 10: Wintergreen.

Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
Yossarian, Chapter 12: Bologna.

It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean to disappear somebody?
Yossarian is told by Nurse Duckett that officials are planing to "disappear" Dunbar, Chapter 34: Thanksgiving.

Joseph Heller

Three Minute Fiction Round Two Winner

For the second round of our contest, we asked you to send us original works of fiction that begin with this sentence: "The nurse left work at five o'clock." The winning story was "Last Seen" by Cathy Formusa of Port Townsend, Wash.

"The nurse left work at five o'clock." He sauntered his words at me like he was king of the street.

"How do you know, Pablo? Maybe you went cold — had a flash, you know, blacked out and when you woke up you thought it was five?" I was pushing him now, just to see how sure he was.

"I like her." He lowered his head humbly for a moment, then abruptly continued in a strength I hadn't ever seen or felt from him before. "She brings me coffee sometimes, at five o'clock. It was five o'clock when my angel in white brought me coffee. And she smiles at me, my coffee angel. No starbucko never done that for me, but my angel does at five o'clock, she left at five, and I saw her!" Pablo karate-chopped his right hand, slicing the air between us to make his point.

He smelled so ripe in the afternoon's August heat, I let it go. I handed him a few bucks and continued my search for her killer.

174 words.

Three Minute Fiction

This one didn't win anything!

Untitled
by Prairie Mary


Since I was back in town, we would have breakfast together, my ex- and I. Separate tables. It would be accidental. Or not. I’d been gone for five years, so I didn’t know whether he still ate there, but he was a creature of habit. And I a creature of guile.

I didn’t know what I hoped. I’d brought along a newspaper to pretend to be absorbed in it if there were someone with him, maybe someone who had spent the night. Actually, I suppose I was more curious than anything else. We hadn’t kept in touch and I sort of wondered how he’d coped, especially since he’d said he couldn’t go on without me. Obviously he must have, if he showed up. Since then I’d sometimes felt I couldn’t go on without HIM, his support and his warmth. I had to write myself a letter to remind myself how cold and harsh everything had gotten.

But then I’d dream of the studio and how the cat would sleep with us, her purring a kind of soundtrack. I knew it would end, of course. He was my first lover and much older than I, which is what I wanted because one of us had to know how to do things, isn’t that right? So I knew I’d move on and maybe he sort of knew that as well. He was so famous, so sought after by women, that I knew he could replace me easily.

The door was glass so I saw him as soon as he arrived and put his hand up to pull the handle. I recognized his old coat. Our eyes met and held. All the plans fell away. He did not smile. For a long moment he stood there, then turned away and hurried on down the sidewalk.

I could not decide whether to follow. When I opened the door, the burst of air made the pages of my abandoned newspaper turn.

326 words.

Link to the original blog.

Cartoon

Zoethrope Magazine Story Winner

The Third Law of Dialectics
by Ted Burton

The editors present the prizewinning story from the 2009 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest.

I am without question a most unremarkable man. My eyes are only slightly misaligned. If you were to look at my face you wouldn’t consciously notice an asymmetry, but neither would you pause to regard my features. If you were to witness me in the execution of a crime, you would misremember details. The descriptions you would provide of me would result in a composite of banalities.
I have never required much sleep; as early as my fourth year, I consistently awoke before my father. While he still snored under layers of cotton and down, I would open my eyes and wait. After my eyes accustomed themselves to the dark, I would lift myself away from the mattress and leave it slouching and bereft in a corner. I would step slowly across the slats of wood so that no splinters could bother the flesh of my bare feet. When I had taken a few steps, I would stop and pull my weight away from the floor in order to stand in the worn ruts of a chair’s lap. Leaning my hands on the surface of a small table, I would wait for dawn to illuminate the dented horizon of pine, and in the half-light I would imagine the existence of the woman my father claimed had been my mother. Maybe her lye-burnt fingers had traced the cracks in the table, or the hems of her homespun had brushed the legs of the chair. Once, while I was thinking these things, I heard an intake of breath behind me. As my father slid feet into boots, I turned and looked at him. He stood up and moved toward the door, stopping just at my left. I continued to look down. From the side of my vision I saw the flash of a flexed forearm, as if an intimate gesture had been stifled. My father tightened his throat and left the room. The cabin resumed its sighing, and the logs went back to unbuilding themselves into the dirt.
I learned very early how to be left alone. When posed with a question, I practiced catatonic silence; when given a command, I turned deliberately to comply. Unlike the children who raced to display their mediocrity to uninterested adults, I managed to attend school without much notice. Instead of asking questions directly I waited for others to offer information. From within the solitude of my supposed inferiority I was able to piece together a family history of contradictions. People discussed my mother all around me, used words as if I couldn’t hear: she was garrulous, shy, confident, promiscuous, possessed, desperate, cunning, self-effacing, saintly, beautiful, tepid, lonely, prurient, a witch. The gossips agreed only that toward the end of her life she could think of nothing but the story of a man named Moses, and that often she heard words whispered in her ears.
I learned to shoot a gun in order to examine the consequences of noise. When I was ten my father left me alone with his weapon, convinced of my respect for its metallic muscularity. My restraint in killing animals was motivated not by an interest in the preservation of their lives but by the discovery that death brings an end to reaction. I would fire shells into empty air and watch quail explode up and out into the hysterical bosom of the shotgun’s thunder. The clap of a single shot would echo above the rows of onion and wheat while scared birds traced a pattern of chaos.
I continued this practice until I was twelve, at which time my father brought home my schoolteacher as his new wife. Previously, the woman had attempted to persuade me to feign an interest in various subjects, and now that she considered me to be her son, she constructed displays of maternal affection. She had introduced herself to my father after months of casting concerned glances over the parts of the pew upon which the faithful rest their elbows. She installed herself in our home. She observed me with a heavy concentration.
I began at this point to consider the benefits of nocturnal amusements. After a time I moved my mattress into the larger of the cabin’s two rooms as if in consideration of the privacy of the new couple. This gesture was accepted without complaint, although for a few weeks I noticed that my father’s wife would rise from her sleep to check on me. She always found me curled into the same quiet circle and decided soon enough that I required no nighttime supervision.
I began my business when the new moon reflected darkness over the valley. Wearing no shoes silently I crept away from the house and the sleeping couple. From the ocean of stars over my head there descended a luminescent fog with which to navigate the road. As I walked I stepped through the murmur of crickets and the hungry mourning of coyotes. I continued until I reached the first homestead on my path. The cracks of the cabin exhaled the warmth of the breeze. The door was latched but not locked.
I assumed that the owner of this place was wealthier than my father because no one slept in the common area. The embers in the stove resisted the dark, and a weak nudge of light reached a nearby shelf. A steel glint gathered up my attention. I picked up a pair of scissors. I opened a door and stepped noiselessly into the sound of breath pressing through a girl’s nose. I stood in the doorway for a time watching a cotton sheet rise and fall in unison with the workings of young lungs.
I stepped to the side of the bed. The girl’s face was turned away from my body. She blew breath over the intricate embroidery of her pillow. I held the scissors in my right hand. Careful not to touch the bed with my knee, I shifted my weight to the left foot, raising the right foot just off the floor. Lifting the sheet away from contact with the sleeping form I snipped a fist-sized circle from the thin material. I placed the scissors on the desk beside her, stuffed the bit of cloth into my pocket, and left the house.
I imagine it was the sound of the closing door that roused her. Within seconds the night was filled with her screams. I turned my head and saw the light of a lantern pass an open window and heard chairs overturn in the house. I jumped over wooden lines of fence and ran through a herd of bothered cows as bullets ripped the air around my head. The angry howl of curses behind me grew more distant. The thumping of the blood in my forehead matched the beat of bare feet on dry earth. Soon my legs finished running. I stashed the stolen bit of cloth in the rafters of the barn. I approached our cabin, slipped though the door, climbed into bed, pulled the covers around my shoulders, and slept.
I awoke the next morning before rooster song. I dressed myself for church and waited for a rustle to sound in the next room. After breakfast I climbed into the back of the wagon, and I sat with my back to my father while he clicked his tongue at the horse. My legs hung off the back of the cart, and I watched our farm disappear as the snorting animal pulled us toward the town. We rode on a wave of sloppy momentum and then slowed to stillness as the steeple bell tolled its last announcement.
I followed my father and his wife into the church’s sagging vestibule and into a cloud of words: indignity, unimaginable, violation. Small footprints had been discovered outside of a certain farmhouse. The parishioners posited the existence of a diminutive man with a deranged interest in young girls. Hadn’t he broken into a home in the middle of the night? Hadn’t he cut a hole in a sheet at the level of the breast? I resolved that the next hole I snipped would be from the foot of a man’s bed.
I waited for the passing of another month, for the sound of crickets to lull the valley to sleep, and once again I lifted myself from the mattress and stepped across an uncreaking cabin floor. This time I carried with me the scissors of my father’s wife. I heard the croaking of a bullfrog and followed the sound, which issued at once from both sides of the distance. I walked a midline barefoot through the corrugations of an onion field, inhaling the bitter, oily air. I saw the silhouette of a leaning shack. I approached an open window through which a man blew snores of whiskey. I climbed over the sill and hopped noiselessly to the floor, then stepped over a dog as wrinkled as the figure in the bed. I extracted the scissors and cut a rough octagonal shape from one side of the sheet, this time leaving a hole the size of my head. I stowed the scissors in my belt, pushed the cloth into my pocket, and left the house.
I amassed, by the time I was fourteen, a great fortune in bits of snipped sheets. They were of various sizes, patterns, and shapes: a fist-size flower print circle, a grimy octagon, and various complex geometrical figures for which I have no names. Although doors and windows were invariably locked, I was able to find a way to enter a home without waking its inhabitants. During these seasons the townspeople conducted business with a veiled hysteria. Three mayors were elected and recalled in two years. A collective insomnia ensued. The heavy eyes of sleep deprivation appeared. Since no man could be implicated in the trespassing, some began to consider the possibility of a supernatural occurrence.
I noticed that the accruing speculation concerned the holes left in the sheets after the snipping had occurred rather than the absent bits of cloth themselves. It was assumed that whoever was responsible for these acts was cutting cloth in search of some hidden thing. I lost interest in the idea of entering a home in order to make an open space in a previously intact plane; instead I decided to observe the collection of stolen scraps with a new attention. Early one morning I climbed to the ceiling of the barn and extracted the bits of cloth. I jumped to the ground and stirred up a circular moment of hay dust, an unhinged, toothless jaw that set back in retreat after reconsidering its decision to swallow my legs. I cleared a patch of floor with my feet. I sat down with the lantern and considered the pieces of fabric through a trellis of dusty light. I waited for an idea’s occurrence. After a time, I paced a trail to the cabin and returned along the same path. Using a needle and thread taken from my father’s wife, I began to sew the edges and corners of the bits of cloth together. Soon I had produced a quilt comprising both snipped remnants and empty space.
I ducked out of the barn and into the quiet of the dark morning. I followed the dirt road for a hundred yards until I arrived at a small growth of birch trees. I pulled the sewn object out of my jacket and hung this banner from a low-reaching tree. Its fissures yawned. The spaces accounted for as much area as the bits of cloth. For a time I watched the activity of the approaching morning through the assembled holes in this new plane. The cool of dusk burned into the flame of sunrise. The sun cast its beams onto my bare feet. The darkness coalesced into the initial stages of shadows as light and dark separated.
I returned home. From the porch I heard the reports of conversable metals and then the insistence of a stoked fire. I opened the door. I entered and sat down at the table. My father sipped coffee from a tin cup, and his wife fried eggs. No one spoke. We three sat in silence as a beam of sun migrated across the floor. After an hour we were startled into notice by the commotion of a dozen voices rushing past the road in front of the cabin. My father and his wife rose from their chairs, and I followed them onto the porch. We could see a crowd congregating around the birch grove. Streams of horses and human beings were approaching from both directions. Wagon wheels rolled across layers of dust. My father gestured to his wife. I followed them first down the steps and then down the road, and then we came to a crowded knot of kneeling people circling a tree and a thing that interested them. People pressed in, whispering in muted mumbles. Some were crying, some praying, some staring in open-mouthed silence. The crowd registered a recognition of the scraps of cloth. Someone approached us and pointed to the banner, asking if we could make out the holy image that had been sculpted out of cotton and space.
I noticed that the crowd was becoming denser, that a stillness was settling on bowed heads. The word miracle moved itself past the lips of those staring at the tree. Someone remarked the blessedness of the occasion. The people seemed to have forgotten the fear that the contemplation of bits of cotton had previously engendered. I wondered if all of those present were deciphering the same form in the puzzle of cloth or if the icon would be formalized later. I heard talk of conversion, which suggested to me that the image in the minds of the majority was the property of a single religion. A low mumble drummed the morning: grace, fruit, womb, holy, mother, sinners, death.
I looked at my father and his wife. He held her hand tightly. Neither seemed to be praying. The flag moved with the push of the breeze. A fat fly settled on a boot. A finger moved across two wet nostrils, and then the palm circled back to rest over open lips. Someone inhaled a triple skip of air. I turned away and walked along the road toward the cabin. My bare feet left an impression in the layer of dust.

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Ted Burton was born and raised in Weiser, Idaho. He is a graduate of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago and works as a hospice chaplain in California’s San Fernando Valley.