Day Two: Short Stories

I've been in love with short stories for decades now. While poetry has never really had an allure for me, the medium of short story tickles me in certain ways that traditional narrative just cannot. I like short stories because, simply, they don't take up the same amount of time as a novel. They make me ask more questions - I think because I get just a glimpse of someone or some situation [it's like how I'm fascinated by people @ the grocery store, on the subway and those that I pass on the street - I want to know a little bit of everyone's story - just a little bit, mind]. At the same time, while I can rattle off a top ten of favourite authors, while still leaving someone I love out - I can't really do the same for short story authors. Of course, there is a lot of crossover [Dostoevsky was a master of both long and short tales - The Underground Man is one of my very favourite short stories]. Short stories tend to be the kind of thing that you read in literature/English classes - you don't really learn about the author too much, but you dissect the story until it's not fun anymore [well, except that I've always found that to be fun].

Semi-recently I've also developed a keen appreciation for true life short story/essay type things. The type of thing written by David Sedaris, in particular. His stuff is so funny that I had to stop reading it on the subway because I was literally guffawing like an absolute crazy person [I should note here that I rarely LOL - with the exception of my omnipresent nervous laughter of social interaction - I'm trying my best to kill that, actually]. Because I'm a huge narcissist, I like the idea of writing about my life in a semi-humourous [people often tell me that I'm funny, but I don't think I'm very funny - I think it's more likely that people don't know how to react to me so they brush it off with their own nervous laughter of social interaction] and semi-serious fashion.

Anyway - this all relates to today's creative thing because today I worked on my own collection of short stories, based on my real life. It's an idea that popped into my head one day while on Facebook and realizing that most of my ex-boyfriends were married with children. This led to me thinking about other male figures in my life and how they are in very different places in life [or death] than when I was actively involved in their life - they are fathers and grandfathers and career people and everything in between. So yeah, my stories are part to show how life moves on without you [even though me, the raging narcissist finds that to be completely impossible on some level] and also to pay homage to the role that person played in my life. I chose to focus on men/boys because I think that they have had a greater influence over me than the fairer sex...and also so that I could address my father [I have tried unsuccessfully to do in writing a number of times].

I've tentatively titled this collection To All The Boys I've Loved Before and so today I wrote what serves as the forward to the collection. It's an explanation of my feelings on what qualifies as love and how/why I say "I love you" too damn much. I didn't feel like I could write anything more than this today and I'm not really satisfied with what I wrote. Generally, I only write when I have a moment of divine inspiration AND there is nothing interesting on TV or anything "better" to do. Let's be clear - I didn't want to write yesterday, but I forced it. I'm very interested to go back and read it [maybe not today - I don't think my ego can take it] to see if it's as crummy as I think it might be. And for the record, I do think it's good for me [in a cod liver oil kinda way] to force myself to write creatively, even if the next 98 days will be hell as a result.