Faded envelopes.
Paper-thin parchment.
Grandfather’s messages from long ago, when words meant more.
When thoughts were embellished by dips of pen into ink and the slow, methodical placement of ornate loops and swirls onto paper.
I wonder, as I trace the lines with trembling fingers, if Grandmother did the same.
Susan Gale Wickes is from Indiana. She enjoys writing and reading 50-word stories.
A previously loud planet is now silent. Its people—including myself—are isolated.
Quietly, I sit at my desk, where my old stories rest. Grabbing a pencil, I add layers to their clothing. Then I create new journeys, with paths that test one’s courage.
Suddenly, I find myself exploring the universe again.
Cristina Marie Pagan has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Glimpse, the Mystic Blue Review, and Seshat Literary Magazine.
Plain bread is bland. So is salad and meat. Condiments alone are dramatically flavoursome, but beyond a couple spoons, even a craving heart finds them unpalatable.
A good story is a sandwich: it takes the tart, intense, and climactic, then stuffs it into the ordinary, bringing out something tantalisingly delicious.
Pitamber Kaushik wrote this story.
I am lonely. Colleagues were my friends. No meetings, no journeys. I am only a doctor when stopped by the police for speeding.
When my husband died, years ago, writing softened my loss. The notebook is still by my bed.
I pick up a pen and start to write again.
Ruth is a retired doctor who has written extensively for the profession. Since retiring she has published a memoir and three novels. She finds flash fiction very rewarding for the elderly brain.
New Year’s Resolution: lose weight, join a gym, take up a hobby, learn to fly, quit smoking, quit drinking, go for an annual physical, stop biting nails, read a book, spend less, save more, get a job, quit swearing, submit to 50 word stories.
One down, twelve more to go.
Marjan Sierhuis loves reading 50 word stories.
For sixty-five years, the writer conversed back and forth with her typewriter, its keys creating a bridge to her imagination.
When arthritis stiffened her fingers and her mind began to wander, the typewriter kept right on telling those stories, willing itself to become the voice for the two of them.
Ran Walker is an award-winning writer who teaches at Hampton University in Virginia. He is at work on a collection of 50-word stories.
Write what you know, they say
so he writes the first draft
of the fog and gravel of Route 16
all the way to work at sunrise.
Before the sun goes down
he’s revised the revised revision
until all he really thinks he knows
is what he says he’s written.
Ron. Lavalette has been widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press, and a reasonable sample of his work can be found at Eggs Over Tokyo.
Care to laugh? Perchance to shiver?
Maybe explore notions and foreign beliefs,
Or wander the depth of human emotion?
What if you could learn something about yourself
You’ve never imagined?
You can tell your tale.
The Muses claim monopoly on these wonders,
But I say every being is a bard.
Luke Swanson is a fledgling author from Oklahoma City. He has a novel and a handful of short stories featured in anthologies from Limitless Publishing.
In my teens, when it wasn’t safe to go home after school, I’d hide out in the library.
To fool the librarians into thinking I belonged there, I flipped through books and magazines.
In this way I slipped into an intimacy with words from which I have yet to recover.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Create a universe. Twist a hand and just let the galaxies flow through your fingertips. Obsess over tiny details: the colour of a flower, that specific shade of orange in the evening sky. Scatter moons into orbit like grains of sand.
That is what it means to be a God.
Isla is a fourteen-year-old aspiring author doing her very best to get her ideas across. Hopefully after exams she’ll have more time to write!