75er Comment Thread

Post your bwaahaaaahaahhaaas in the comments below.

D.

32 comments to 75er Comment Thread

  • I’ll kick things off. Microsoar’s story? Bwaahahahaaa! And it even has otolaryngologic relevance.

  • tam’s is GROSSSSSS. ew.
    and…i have no chance. i still might try. but i’ve gotta bow before someone who compares pieces of brain to nuts.

  • Three entries so far, three genres. Cool!

    Write from the heart, Shaina, and I bet people will love it.

  • Shaina, I agree. Tam’s story… shudder. Which is the intended effect, I believe. It works.

    Don’t worry about what other people have done, just have fun with trying to write a complete story in 75 words. Write about something you know: a young woman in college, for example. :)

  • Microsoar: hilarious twist.

    Tam: At last count, that’s about 950 different kinds of wrong.

  • Mab’s an alien, right? Makes me wonder what kind of gun she has.

    Microsoar’s story made me laugh. Quite the twist ending. Woohoo!

  • tambo
    Hmmm, I never imagined Mab as an alien. Just a human who’s gone home, because “the last place he’ll look is in my home”, or something.

    Your interpretation is interesting, though.

  • Pat–i think the reason tam, and i, thought mab is an alien is because you say “back to Earth” and “after 100 years”. although i suppose in a futuristic setting, humans could live more than 100 years, and travel to lots of other places. but the first reaction on my part is that she is not an earthling.

  • the first reaction on my part is that she is not an earthling.

    Me too.

    Note to Doug: I had to look up “otolaryngology”. Relevance unintended, btw, but glad you got a Bwaahahahaaa out of it.

    and to Shaina: I find these things work best if you follow a “free association” technique for inspiration.

    Or you could take a similar route to the one I use to draw really great bunny rabbits. Put a whole lot of pencil lines on paper and then erase all the non-rabbity ones.

  • Chris

    I tried that, Microsoar, but I wound up with a page full of holes.

  • Re: otolaryngology.

    Jeez, it’s only my profession :) And it used to be worse. We used to call ourselves otorhinolaryngologists (ear, nose, throat — get it?)

  • I wound up with a page full of holes.

    Can anything actually be full of holes? I mean, if it were all holes, it wouldn’t be there at all.

    Oh. I’ve just described a Matthew Reilly book plot.

  • From my inbox . . . I thought this was a 75er:

    About this….I didn’t lnow what was the pain, and I did not want to talk to anyone about it, until it got to the point to where I got a girlfriend, and I told her that I have pain there and she said did you see the doctor for it? Well, no I said. Then I went. It was embarrassing to talk about it, I couldn
    t even look at the doctor till after I was finished. It is good that I did, as now there is recovery.

    . . . but it was in response to this post.

    My bad!

  • Just wanted to say that I found my way over here from Dean’s Anacronyms - very nice entries so far.

  • Microsoar
    By Jove, Holmes! Was he left-handed, too?

  • Re-discovered A Softer World tonight, thanks to Tor.com’s e-newsletter. Some of these are remarkably compact stories (less than 75 words, I’ll warrant), with nastiness to spare. Like #350 and #354, f’rinstance.

  • Shaina, Tam: I wouldn’t say you’re wrong to assume Mab is an alien. When I wrote it, I imagined her as human, but really, she could just as easily be inhuman…

  • By Jove, Holmes! Was he left-handed, too?

    “I originally thought so, Watson after examining the disposition of his used cutlery in the kitchens after the royal banquet. However, this was until I realised that the fish served was, in fact, red herring.”

  • You know what amazes me? How many times I’ve used the phrase “a red herring” only to be met with blank stares.

  • You know what amazes ME? The number of times I’ve used the phrase ‘blank stares’ only to be met with red herring.

    At high velocity.

  • another place, similar to a softer world but nicer, is storypeople.com. they blow me away. my favorite goes like this: “you’re the strangest person i ever met she said & i said you too & we decided we’d know each other a long time” and then there’s the one we bought my parents for their anniversary: “two could live as cheaply as one if one of us didn’t like chocolate so much”. :-D some are long, some are short, some are funny, some are sad, all make you think. i love them to pieces.

  • my “story”, such as it is, came to me as i was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and i had to get up, grab my glasses and sit here shivering cuz i have no socks on and write it before it escaped. what think you?

  • I liked it, Shaina, but you’re right, it’s not a story. But that’s okay — you’re in good company. Lots of ‘em aren’t stories, strictly speaking.

    What I thought reading yours . . . Ten years? You think you’re going to have perspective in TEN YEARS?

    And, Don’t worry. You’ll always remember why this time of your life was such a bitch.

    Age stuff sucks but many things about life do improve with the passing decades.

  • i have another…story-er one in mind. is sexy. i think you’ll like it. i just gotta flesh it out another 30 words or so…

  • it’s true, too ;-) thanks!

  • Shaina
    For some reason your latest story made me think of a poem I read once, called “Raising Rabbits” or something like that:

    Get a female, she’s a doe
    Get a male, he’s a buck
    Put ‘em together and watch ‘em [ahem]
    Add food and water.

  • Woops, big brain fart, that should’ve been directed at tambo, not Shaina.

    <blushes>

  • Haha, but it could apply to Shaina’s second one too!

  • That had crossed my mind, too.

    <blushes more>