Inspired by the book Nothing Short of 100, here’s a crack at my 100-word essay.
If you’re feeling inspired, I’d love for you to share one in the comments :)
I rolled backward for savasana, corpse pose. Eyes closed, I watched as an imaginary brown leaf slowly zig-zagged toward me.
That’s me, I realized. The old me.
For the last four years, I had been grasping at it, missing the truth. I had been willing it to fall upward, to turn green again, to reattach itself to the familiar, stable tree (that, in hindsight, wasn’t ever stable, just familiar).
The leaf died the moment it separated from its branch. The only thing left for it to do now was exist in free fall, fluttering slowly but inevitably to the ground.1
❤️
The book, Nothing Short of 100, is edited by and , who cofounded the 100 Word Story project in 2011. They were introduced to the form through Paul Strohm’s book, Sportin’ Jack. I love how they describe the essence of the assignment:
“Shorts require immediacy; they’re a flicker of light in the darkness, a pinprick, a thunderclap. The writer has to hone focus, to practice a Zen-like concentration in a way that longer pieces don’t require because the privilege the layering of detail and exposition. Telling a good flash story is similar to playing the Ouija board. You discover a small part of the story and let your imagination communicate with the other side to know the rest of it.”
Be sure to also check out Grant’s wonderful book, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story, and join NaNoWriMo coming up (another writing community he cofounded), where we all strive to write 50,000 rough draft words in the month of November. If you do join, add me as a friend here.
Last but not least, you might also enjoy his podcast with , Write-Minded.
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And, oh, yeah. . . Ernest Hemingway is said to have written the shortest short story in the English language, "For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn!". According to legend, Hemingway wrote the six-word story after being challenged to create a short story in that length at lunch with other writers. He won the bet, and later claimed the line was the best thing he'd ever written. Hemingway was a pioneer of the short story genre, known for his economical writing style.
Brevity is a wonderful practice. I just read Naomi Shihab Nye's collection of "up to 1000-word" short stories, There Is No Long Distance Now, and enjoyed the craft and impact immensely. And of course, a leaf's life continues after it hits the ground. Perhaps trajectory is opposite: our life starts on the ground!