#011 Your 100 Word Story
Fridays shouldn’t be stressful but the kick-off to a great weekend! Because structure is important, writing your own 100 Word Story is back on Free Writing Fridays!
Whether it’s the start of an adventure with a cliffhanger or a poem needing to be told, you can still just write whatever you desire.
GUIDE
Most Important: Word length is exactly 100 words. I recommend using Google Docs as a scratch pad and go to Tools → Word Count and check the “Display word count while typing”
Genre? Totally up to you. Share a mystery. Give us thrills, chills, and suspense. Or make us shed a tear.
Fiction or non-fiction applies here. This is your blank canvas.
Copy/paste your story in the comments section for others to read. If you post it in your own Substack (highly recommended and encouraged) just share the link in the comments.
A Note on Notes | If you use Substack Notes, click the 🔄 “Restack with a Note” and copy/paste your story as a Note.
New subscriber here–but wanted to stop in and say how fun this is. I love micro fiction, and I admire Kathy Fish and others who are so talented at it. Thank you for this forum to explore our own skills and get writing!
Also posted on Notes — here’s my poem for today…
Here’s my 100 Word Poem for this Friday…
In my kitchen at midnight…
In my kitchen at midnight
I coax chickpeas she demands,
the day before she arrives.
I know she likes them sour
and piquant, spicy and rich.
Lining spices, I carry
love, a heavy bottomed pot.
I roast anardana, zeera,
Tez patta, laung, amchur — young
mangoes once, now powdered dry.
Peel and chop, ready flavors that
burgeon over searing flame.
She’s in my kitchen. More
than hunger. She sees me
ladle caution as I serve,
Why’d you worry for me, Ma?
I laugh, not speak out loud, You’ll
know the day you’re disarmed by
a tiny, defenseless one…
– reena kapoor | 7/21/23
We Have to Let You Go
Convince me, he had said. You have one hundred words to save your job. Bastard. I’ve been here seven years. Since it was a flashy start-up. I did the long days, the late nights, the early starts. Jesus, I didn’t even draw a wage until January. That made for a pretty shitty Christmas. But I digress. One hundred words, you say? What can I say to convince you? Without me you’d be … no, what about, I would love just five more weeks to finish the … no, okay, so what about ‘fuck your job, you despicable piece of …’
Title: My Idiot Dad
Everything all set up. I signed on the dotted lines. I had become a soldier.
Well, not quite thanks to my idiot dad.
Since I was still in high school, I needed my parents to sign off my recruitment papers. But he refused to do so. Naturally, I was pissed. You’d think 9/11 would have enraged him as much as it did me. He insisted that Iraq had nothing to do with New York.
He didn’t budge, no matter how heated I got. Soon, I dropped the subject.
I didn’t know it at the time, but he saved my life.