Day timers for micro-stories
Some of what I scribbled this week. The key is to have very low expectations.
Some people buy books of prompts and maybe that’s useful. I find them expensive and I have yet to find one where the prompts inspire me instead of making me groan.
I’m difficult that way. But charming in other ways, I swear!
Every year I buy a day timer and as sure as morning follows the night I proceed not to use it for its intended purpose. That’s because I use the electronic calendar on my iPhone and iPad and MacBook that very cleverly and conveniently syncs between all three devices thanks to the magic of iCloud. It’s like an iCult; the ghost of Steve Jobs is what keeps me organized.
Every year I buy a day timer anyway.
I use it to write micro-stories each day. As you can see from the picture above, they are really short. Even shorter on weekends. As you can also see from the picture above, they’re not especially good. That’s fine. They’re not supposed to be good. They’re just supposed to be.
This is the kind of writing you do without much by way of expectations, other than to scribble a few lines disconnected from everything else you’re working on.
Later, once you’re busy scribbling in the next year’s day timer, you can go back to your old efforts and keep what’s good, edit what’s rescuable and chuck the rest. You’d be amazed how many micro-stories fall into the first two categories.
Pro tip: If you wait until shortly before the new year begins, you’ll find many day timers are your local big box bookstore heavily discounted. I’ve rarely paid more than $12 for one of those. Not bad, for a year’s worth of writing on command. And no need for cringe-worthy prompts.