June 1, 2019
Triggered by the remarkable prose of Merritt Tierce’s “Distributed Denial of Service,” a short burst of prose that floated through my Facebook feed a few days ago, courtesy of GRANTA, I’ve begun working on short stories again. After completing a manuscript last fall, I had wished to move into and across further projects, but for now, I seem to be sketching out the beginnings of three separate stories, still working out where each of them might be headed, sketching out elements of character, story and impulse. The threads for each story are a bit scattershot, as my stories usually are at first, working in a multitude of directions, without every strand working yet to connect to the others.
Given naming has long been something tricky, I took Pearl Pirie’s advice and consulted an online name generator, which provided me with “Sabrina Hall” and “Sera Morris.” I’m still working to figure out who they are, and if they connect at all. And even if they are meant to appear in the same story. A third story seems to, so far, have a nameless male character in the lead. We shall see if he even requires a name. If that is even important.
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