The Inadvertent Gardener

Not long ago, Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening started following my Twitter feed, which led her to another of my web ventures.

“I am charmed!” she wrote to me. “These are little jewels, prose poems…I want to collect them all! Did you ever write a post explaining what got you started writing these?”

I responded to her that I had not written such a post, but that I had been meaning to. In keeping with the thematic emphasis, I had been waiting for a garden-related story to blossom in my notebook, but one hasn’t arisen yet, so I might as well stop dragging my feet.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, let me formally introduce you to 100 Proof Stories.

That particular blog came out of a conversation Betsy and I had one day last September. We have occasional writing-lunch dates, where we escape from the office and head to a nearby Panera to eat soup and salad, chatter on for awhile, and then, usually, give ourselves a hearty 20 minutes in which to write before we have to return to work.

I told Betsy that I had been considering a fiction blog of some sort – something that would allow me to get work out there and circumvent the more traditional publication process. I have longer stories in circulation, and they trudge from lit mag slush pile to lit mag slush pile, plaintively looking for a home. Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure each story has its own set of flaws, but fundamentally, they’re good work. They just haven’t found their place, and even when they do, I’ll probably get a couple of contributor’s copies for my time and trouble.

“But part of me doesn’t want to put work out there on a site myself,” I said. “It’s not as legitimate, somehow.”

Betsy scrunched up her face, because she did not agree with me.

It took me a couple of weeks, but I mulled over the concept. What if I thought of the blog less as publication and more as structure? By committing to post every other day, I’d drive myself to write more regularly, and to do so in a format that is ever-so-compatible with my crazy life. So one day, I wrote the first story and launched the blog.

I have cranked out numerous 100-word stories with my notebook resting on the tray table of one United Express plane or another. I have written them while sitting in restaurants, at bars late at night, in the morning before work and, indeed, at Panera with Betsy.

The stories fall into three categories: Kind of true, which is my version of creative non-fiction; Not so true, because all fiction, after all, comes from a seed of truth; and Overheard, because I love to listen to what’s going on around me.

As a result, I am once again writing almost every day. Because even when I can’t find time to write something longer, I can find time to string together 100 words into a small, intoxicating story.