Author commentary on stories featured on my Freely Written podcast in July 2024: City Life and Widgets.
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. 119 – City Life – July 10, 2024
Listen first to avoid spoilers! Find the story here: City Life
While I don’t consider myself a big traveler, I do love a change of scenery. In fact, in a fantasy scenerio where money (and our abysmal housing situation) wasn’t an issue, I might really love to own multiple homes. A cabin in the woods, a cottage by a beach, and–most importantly–a condo in a big city. While scenic forests, mountains, and oceans have their charms, I feel more energized in a city. I love the crowds of people and flow of traffic. The promise of so much to do… museums, theater, festivals, etc… all within easy reach.
I was thinking about cities, and upcoming travel plans, when I picked City Life as a story prompt. As always, I wrote the story with no planning. For a brief moment, as my hands hovered about my keyboard, I flashed on the idea of lifelong New Yorkers deftly weaving through tourists on the street until… what? Something unusual enough to interrupt their set routine? But before I started to type, I pictured those city dwellers dodging kids getting off a tour bus and those kids captured my attention.
That’s often how my free-writing works. Moments flash through my mind until something in montage jumps out at me. It’s very fast and barely conscious, a fleeting parade of ideas that can branch in any direction I choose to follow. The visiting kids likely came from a subconscious memory of my first trip to New York City. The 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students from my tiny midwest school piled onto a tour bus and spent 3 days in the Big Apple. It was a culture shock, and as I quietly took in the city, I felt the first spark of hope that there was more to life than my stifling little town. And that’s what I tried to capture as Billy stares out his hotel window.
Ep. 120 – Widgets – July 24, 2024
Listen first to avoid spoilers! Find the story here: Widgets
Widgets is a funny word. It’s fun to say and has a definition just vague enough to make it apply to many uses. It also just happened to hop into my head when I cast about for a writing prompt. Probably because it’s a funny word. I don’t think there was any more to that initial thought, though my mind quickly added: Widgets or whatchamacallits? Which is why the story begins with asking if a widget is a whatchamacallit. Two funny words phrased in a tongue-twister-ish way.
Both words seemed like such obvious prompts to me that I had to scroll through my list of past stories to make sure they hadn’t been used before. Neither had. Which makes me wonder if whatchamacallit should also get its day in the sun. Maybe in some future fiction. For now, let’s look at what I did write for Widgets….
Maybe I was in a silly mood, but I really wanted to lean into the sounds of words. Lots of alliteration while also repeating widgets and watchamacallits as often as possible. Of course, that became a confused conversation rife with flummoxed frustration. Stories like that may be more fun to write than read/hear, though I hope it was a fun listen. And I do like the meta twist at the end, which began to seem necessary after giving the writer a form of my name. (ha!)
Have a suggestion for a future writing prompt? Let me know! If your prompt is chosen, I will give you credit in the episode.