This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.
Today’s rerun is Nervous Twitches. I have a fondness for (very) short stories that try to say a lot. Stories that could be mistaken for poems; that have a similar economy of language. The post contains 12 words.
I haven’t written many of these kinds of stories because they don’t come to me very often, and there are few ways for me to sit down and try to think of one without it feeling super pretentious. It’s not like some challenge I want to fulfill—some stories simply require few words.
There are these small moments in life that can be captured in a single sentence, but where each word holds an entire story. I wasn’t trying to be clever when writing that post, I was just capturing a fleeting moment. It was only afterwards that I realized what the story really captured.
It did capture a moment in time, of course. A moment that has occurred several times, actually, but a moment nonetheless. It also tells you something about my nervous system, though. It tells you something about my wonderful, caring wife, and perhaps that we weren’t alone.
I enjoy this story more than many of the others I write. A short story that, really, took years to write. I spent seconds typing the words, but I couldn’t have written it without the preceding decade building a relationship with someone who both notices and cares.
These are some of my favorite things to read from others, too. Little vignettes that contain so much, but barely exist on the page. I hope that you’ll capture your own whenever you notice them.