Author commentary on stories featured on my Freely Written podcast in April 2024: Tread Softly and Infinity Plus One.
At the end of each month, I’ll shed some light on my writing adventures.
If you’re new to Freely Written, this podcast offers very short stories written from a chosen prompt with no planning and very little editing. These stories are an exercise in letting go of perfection and embracing spontaneous creativity. You may even be inspired to write a story of your own!
Episodes are released every other Tuesday and are around 10 minutes long. Listen with your favorite podcast app or from the links below!
Ep. 112 – Tread Softly – April 2, 2024
Listen first to avoid spoilers! Find the story here: Tread Softly
This story has a nostalgic feel, though it’s not based on anything that happened in my own life. Or on any relationships in my own life, family or otherwise. The nostalgia mood while writing it was inspired by rereading a book I loved when I was growing up. Tread Softly by Corinne Gerson. The book is now out of print, but I recently tracked down a copy and had a chance to reread it.
The story in Tread Softly is not related to the story I’ve told here. In the book, a young girl named Kitten is being raised by her grandparents after her parents died in a car accident. Though she loves her grandparents and younger brother, she copes with her grief by creating an imaginary family, including parents, an older brother, and a young sister. When Kitten takes a job babysitting for the summer, she finds herself talking about her imaginary family as if they were real. It’s a touching story and has always stuck with me.
Thoughts of an idealized family may have been in my mind when I sat down to write this story. Also, the knowledge that the phrase “tread softly” comes from a poem by W.B. Yeats:
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
W.B. Yeats
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Otherwise, I sat down with a vague idea of a girl reflecting on advice she had gotten from an older relative and this is the story that came out.
Ep. 113 – Infinity Plus One – April 16, 2024
Listen first to avoid spoilers! Find the story here: Infinity Plus One
As you may already know, in addition to writing novels and short stories, I also teach yoga and practice regularly. Each week, I try to catch a virtual class taught by my friend Gretchen Schutte at Peace in the Pause. One day, during our post class chat, I showed Gretchen the Infinity Strap I like to use and mentioned needing a prompt for my next podcast story. Which led to the prompt Infinity Plus One.
This is one of those fast and easy, conversation stories that just spilled onto the page. Put a couple of kids together, trying to one-up each other with “infinity plus one” than “infinity plus infinity” etc. and the story practically writes itself. I tried to give it a little twist with their mom dropping some higher math that would confuse them into dropping the argument, but I’m not a mathematician, so I’m not super confident about that part. Feel free to comment with a correction–Ha!
My podcast episodes come out every other Tuesday. That usually means two stories each month. However, April this year ended up with three stories. I don’t have much else to say about Infinity Plus One, so let’s get on to the next–special edition–story
Ep. 114 – Sleep Edition: Soft Summer Rain – April 30, 2024
Listen first to avoid spoilers! Find the story here: Sleep Edition: Soft Summer Rain
In this special edition of Freely Written, I decided to try something new: a story with a quieter tone that might help listeners fall asleep. I’ve been having some trouble sleeping lately and remembered that there are podcasts that read people to sleep. I tried a few of them back when I was struggling to sleep in a recliner after my endometriosis surgery. Recalling that, I thought it might be fun to write and record a “sleep edition” of a Freely Written story.
The story itself is rather simple, though I lightly drew from my experience with teaching yoga nidra, which is a special guided meditation sometimes known as “yogic sleep.” To be clear, this story is not a yoga nidra script. It simply has some similar elements such as a rotation of awareness through the body, which my mom used to do with me when I was little and she knew nothing about yoga!
Since I was writing a sort of bedtime story, I wanted to narrate using a softer, slower voice. That meant my usual little theme song intro felt too brisk and jaunty. So I hopped to my piano and recorded a few seconds of a new intro with a similar, softer sound. My usual intro is just a bit of improvised 12-bar blues in E major. For this sleep edition, I simply arpeggiated E major in both the bass and melody line. I also decided to update the icon image for this episode by drawing a crescent moon in a sleep cap onto the usual logo.
It was fun to try something different. If listeners like it, I may occasionally write more Freely Written stories for sleep. Though not every week. If you’re interested in that, please tell me!
Have a suggestion for a future writing prompt? Let me know! If your prompt is chosen, I will give you credit in the episode.
Until next time, try a little free writing of your own. Let go of any planning and see where your imagination takes you!