I love stories. I remember sitting on the mat in class when our teacher would read Roald Dahl stories like the BFG or The Half Men of O by Maurice Gee. I would feel spellbound. It had something to do with the intriguing intonations my teacher would use, and the mysterious words, characters and worlds that would waft across the airwaves and weave their way through our ears and into our imaginations. It was a moment in the day when we knew we would step through the threshold from the laborious grind of schoolwork and into a far, forgotten land.
Although our modern stories are more visually manufactured by the likes of Netflix,
there is still that mystical quality of escape and coming back for more.
Sometimes life gets too busy to create a fully-fledged visual project when you are working to pay the bills. I wanted something small and constant that I could chip away at each day to keep the creative juices flowing. I began the 1000 Wonders project at the end of 2016. Each day I would write one short story, each only one page long. I did not know it then, but this was already a genre called Flash Fiction. Apparently, it can be polarizing, where some people like it and some do not. Maybe because we want to take time with immersing ourselves in a story as it unfolds into a deeper sojourn.
When I've write these short short stories,
I feel like I am sitting on the school mat again.
I throw myself at the page. I do not sit and wait for writer's block to happen. I will blurt out the first image or thought that comes to mind, which tends to involve falling smack into the middle of some bizarre conflict or crisis, or walking gently through a lavish garden toward the crowded arena of happenings. I love the thought of not knowing what is about to happen, once I start, and sometimes almost finish, the page. I do not know what world we are going to, or characters we are going to meet. I do not know what struggle someone is having, or what epiphany or threat may lay around the corner. In this regard, writing is a subconscious and cathartic pastime. That said, the more I write, the more ideas and spin-offs begin happening. I now work off a list of interesting titles, phrases and scenarios that I will go to and unpack for 500 words.
Better yet, I will abandon the list and dive into the word ether completely.
I invite you to explore these stories. Yes, they are short. I can only recommend that you think of this compilation like an art gallery - a large vaulted space with blacked out light. As you negotiate your way through the darkness, you will find a pane-less window staring out at another world, its light subdued or piercing, depending on what lies beyond. Next to that window is another, and another, and another. There are so many to explore. For the time being, you can only stand at each window briefly, glimpsing a fragment of a possible life in a possible world. The effects of that moment are between you and what lies beyond. For now, you can only glimpse a possibility, a potentiality. However, who knows, one day you may come back and that whole world may be written, the window replaced by a door, and you can enter it in its entirety. Who knows where that could lead?
Click here to enter The Gallery of 1000 Wonders
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