When I worked at The Hartford Times, five or six decades ago, we were a long city block from the Travelers Tower. Most decent-weather mornings, some of its occupants spilled onto the sidewalk f
or a breath of fresh air – or nicotine – with paper cups of coffee.
I suspect times and customs have changed, but I enjoyed remembering those gatherings, and imagining a little fillip of surprise. The editors of the Westchester Writers Workshop enjoyed it, too, and published it in their semi-annual magazine, “Confetti”.
You can enjoy it too, by clicking ➙here
usually seems too constrained, but occasionally I find a topic that doesn’t need more than that — and then Panoply is the one I try first. When I sent them a piece on taking my bird feeders down, they accepted it in a short three weeks, telling me (what a writer loves to hear) “The writing quality itself is the winner in this piece.”
district was more cautious than anyone I’ve known, before or since: He worked entirely alone in places where a slip or fall would probably be fatal.
blizzard-like, then melted away when the sun came out. Might make the setting, I thought, for a romance lasting little longer.
visit to the Galapagos islands: I’m posed on a beach with a sea lion seeming to be just over my shoulder.
of 2021, mid-pandemic; I found myself listening to a recording of a favorite opera, Salomé, and wistfully imagined enjoying a concert performance in Hartford’s premier showplace, The Bushnell.
Suppose a disturbed youngster came to spend a week with a grandmother at a retirement community like the one where I make my home. If Gram was a very wise old lady, she might do some good. I would try to phrase my short story so the reader thought she MIGHT be helping, but avoid a decisive Gram-fixed-that.
monthly here at Seabury, often sharing short pieces prompted by a theme our leader offers. Whatever the prompt was in May, my fictive imagination conjured up an older man (not quite as ancient as I) working up an appetite to make firewood of a tree felled in his yard — and looking forward to his loving wife’s massaging away the aches of seldom-used muscles.
Mafia enforcer was impious if not sacrilegious. But the idea tickled my imagination; having tiptoed into irreverent territory, I decided to have fun embellishing my blasphemy.
my fictive mind has been going back to remember – and imagine – what pregnant girls did when abortion was not only illegal but not available nearby, either. Was it a matter or shame or loss, or both? Was the secrecy of their decisions inviolable?
