 Short Stories: May 10, 2023 Issue [#11951] |
This week: Science Fact Edited by: Shannon  
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1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
Welcome to the Short Stories Newsletter. I am Shannon and I'm your editor this week.
Keep reading for your chance to claim an exclusive trinket! |
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Every once in a while I come across something so intriguing that story ideas instantly start flooding my brain. I'm going to share one with you today. Perhaps it will inspire you too.
Imagine transferring a city of 9 million people into one single structure that is 500 meters (1,640 feet) tall, 200 meters (656 feet) wide, and 170 kilometers (106 miles) long. A community free from roads, cars, and emissions, but you can travel end-to-end in 20 minutes via high-speed rail. A community in which residents have access to all their daily needs within a 5-minute walk from their homes while they enjoy an ideal climate year-round. It sounds like some sci-fi utopia straight out of the mind of Ernest Callenbach, but it's real. In fact, construction started last October and Saudi Arabia's "The Line" is scheduled to accept its first residents by 2030.
I find this terrifying and mindblowing at the same time. I wouldn't want to give up my freedom and space to live in a place like this, but I'd love to see it. If they pull it off it will be an engineering marvel unlike anything humanity has ever seen outside of a science fiction novel. The more I learn about The Line the more questions I have, and my imagination is working overtime thinking about what life would be like in such a place.
Now that I've gotten The Line off my chest, let's segway from science fiction becoming science fact into what inspires you to write. We all aspire to strike a chord, evoke an emotional response, and create a memorable experience for the reader. Of course, not everyone will like everything you write, but I believe that having just one person say your work moved them in some way is the greatest compliment a writer can receive.
So how can we improve? What can we do to perfect our craft? Here are some of my favorite quotes by a few of the world's most beloved writers:
 ‘‘If I started to wait for moments of inspiration, I would never finish a book. Inspiration for me comes from a regular effort.’’ ~ Mario Vargas Llosa
“Don’t let earnings be your sole drive for writing but rather pursue your love for writing and do it to the best of your ability that people can’t stop admiring you for it." ~ Maya Angelou
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” ~ Neil Gaiman
“Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.’’ ~ David Ogilvy
“If you’re using dialogue, say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.” ~ John Steinbeck
“The first draft of everything is shit.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” ~ Elmore Leonard
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ~ Anton Chekhov
“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.” ~ Zadie Smith
“Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever.” -Will Self
“If you tell the reader that Bull Beezley is a brutal-faced, loose-lipped bully, with snake’s blood in his veins, the reader’s reaction may be, ‘Oh, yeah!’ But if you show the reader Bull Beezley raking the bloodied flanks of his weary, sweat-encrusted pony, and flogging the tottering, red-eyed animal with a quirt, or have him booting in the protruding ribs of a starved mongrel and, boy, the reader believes!” ~ Fred East
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that.” ~ Stephen King
“Always be a poet, even in prose.” ~ Charles Baudelaire
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” ~ William Faulkner
“You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.” ~ Richard Price
"A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it." ~ Edgar Allen Poe
“You can fix anything but a blank page.” ~ Nora Roberts
“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.” ~ Ray Bradbury
“Write about the emotions you fear the most.” ~ Laurie Halse Anderson
“Any word that doesn’t advance a story slows it down. Which is reason enough to avoid expletives. Contrary to popular misconception, the term ‘expletive’ refers to a whole class of empty words, not just gratuitous profanities. Most expletives simply fill out the syntax of sentences. The most common is ‘there are,’ ‘there is,’ ‘there was,’ ‘it is,’ ‘it was,’ and so on.” ~ Jack Hart
“On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn’t help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won’t write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.” ~ Anne Rice
Writing about things that move you tends to move others. When you're passionate about something, that passion comes through in your writing. Some of the topics that move you may make you uncomfortable; do them justice by writing about them as honestly and fearlessly as you can. Don't hold back. As Hemingway once said, “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Do any of these topics give you an idea for a story? Have you written a story that made you uncomfortable? Every registered author who shares their ideas and/or creative endeavors relating to or inspired by this week's topic will receive an exclusive "The Line" trinket. The image used to make this month's trinket was created by yours truly. I will retire this month's limited-edition trinket in July when my next short stories newsletter goes live.
Thank you for reading.
Additional Reading:
 Ernest Hemingway Creates a Reading List for a Young Writer (1934)
 The Line
 Everything You Need to Know About Saudi Mega-Project Neom
 The Line BEGINS! |
I hope you enjoy this week's featured selections. I occasionally feature static items by members who are no longer with us; some have passed away while others simply aren't active members. Their absence doesn't render their work any less relevant, and if it fits the week's topic I will include it.
Thank you, and have a great week!
|  | Rockabee (E)
A tale of Rockabee, a town in the drop of Alder sap by the Giant's Grave in Cong, Ireland
#1227521 by Basilides  |
| |  | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#579367 by Not Available. |
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The following is in response to "This Day In History" :
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JCosmos  writes: food for thought. there is an internet site that lists things that happened on particular dates and a site that shows what happened on your birthday. Do you have links to either site? also please send me the trinket
Hi, JCosmos. Thank you for reading! Here are a few sites you may find helpful: Take Me Back To: , This Day in History , What Happened in My Birth Year? , and On This Day .
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BIG BAD WOLF Feeling Thankful  writes: Sometimes a date has a hidden meaning that mainstream writers don't seem to get, unless they are in the know.
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Paul  writes: I quite frequently read old headlines and articles from old newspapers for ideas. Several stories of mine like, "Sometimes You Can’t Save Them," "An Interrupted Flight," "Mass Hysteria," "Duck And Cover," "Emmy the Prognosticator," and a bunch more. "Mass Hysteria" was mostly a personal anecdote about being told in school around the 3rd grade in Grande Island, New York that a curb would protect me from a nuclear blast. Have you ever lain beside a curb? When I did one eye was always above the curb so I’d be looking at the blast. I didn’t feel very safe.
The rest are stories prompted by happenings around the world.
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dragonwoman  writes: I've have written a story based on a historic fact. "Snowbound by Love" is based on a record blizzard they had in Halifax in the 1800's. Many people could not make it home and ended up stranded in shops.
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Turkey DrumStik  writes: A good amount of my recent writing has stemmed from living through recent history. By recent history, I am referring to George Floyd's death. That event and its aftermath took place mere days before my birthday, something that compounded the horror I experienced. A lot of my writing (fiction and nonfiction) has been devoted to depicting what life was and has been like for people living in Minneapolis. I want there to be a thorough account of the "on the ground" experience from people who were actually there when it unfolded. National and international media all across the ideological spectrum have distorted the story and ignored the local perspective. While my story is but one of the hundreds of thousands from the city, I want to make sure it's out there so people can understand the emotional weight of actually living through such unrest.
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GaelicQueen  writes: It is interesting how memories work or don't work for some people. My son discovered in his late teen years, Momma will not put up with any shenanigans. He had returned home to live for a bit. I instituted a rule that he be home by the curfew hour and if he was going to stay at a friend's house, he had to send me a text message. In the early wee hours after Midnight, we get a call from the police that he ran off the road into a ditch. He was ok, but not the truck, willing to give him a break, officer asked if we would come get him. They had given him a breathalyzer test, and he barely passed. I said no. Take him to jail, we'll come get him in the morning. His truck was towed to the impound lot. We picked him up at Noon. You can well imagine the icy silence on the way home. Court hearing, probation and required alcohol prevention classes followed. Twelve years have passed since that incident. He moved to another state, married a wonderful young woman who keeps him on the straight and narrow path and a job he has he excels at.
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Jeff  writes: I've found myself really enjoying alternative history stories. I like the idea of taking a historical event and imagining how, if things had gone differently, it would change what the modern world looks like. Alternative history stories often take big, popular events like who won a significant war, or who discovered an invention, but I also like to imagine how the little events can make a difference too.
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Princess Megan Snow Rose   writes: I don't write crime but I have written in first person as Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn about their thoughts and feelings before they were killed. A good newsletter. Spooky thing to read before I go to bed. Crime is still with us. Shootings. I remember poor Sharon Tate. Her death always bothered me. I did enjoy this Newsletter.
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~Brian K Compton~ writes: In my time as a news reporter, I was able to bring Lois Gibbs of New York’s infamous Love Canal to our community to advise a community group contesting the location of a new elementary school on questionable land. The property was the focus of a multi-million dollar clean-up, called a Superfund site. Basically, removing environmental waste left by the Ford Motor company from vehicle production in the 40s and 50s, sent to a type 3 landfill. It was my foray into investigative journalism that produced support from civil attorneys, attempt to stay construction, denied by judge, a state investigation and testing of the site, and the FAA, because of close proximity to local airport. Three top members of the school board rolled tape on me to intimidate in my studio, the mayor had a cop shake down my old man unsuccessfully at his vegetable stand, and a threatening call from the profane land owner who made a 1000% profit on the land sale. When I turned over my materials from my investigation to a state agency for further investigation, I learned how high up corruption goes when the auditor said, “heard you got run out of town.” I responded, “check your sources.” I quit my job to finish college (win 3 state broadcasting awards) and work myself into the political scene in Lansing, MI state capitol. But, Affirmative action upended my bid. My short stories recount and embellish those earlier times: "Invalid Item"
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Lilli 🧿 ☕  writes: Using history as writing inspiration is a great idea! Wonderful and interesting newsletter, as always.
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Shanachie writes: My first novel took place during Desert Storm so many of the events were shaped by things that I witnessed from home.
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tj-turkey-jobble-jobble-hard-J  writes: I find it interesting how each member of my own family has different thoughts about past events, but like beauty, I think that history is often in the eyes of the person.
I don't use past history or memories in my stories, but I'm sure it influences my writing. My poetry, however, often reflects memories and times in my life.
Here is one such poem: "Sunsets" |
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