Let’s write “One More Story” together!
Nov 9th, 2009 by sheistoofondofbooks
Last week I wrote about One Story the magazine that brings subscribers one piece of short fiction every three weeks.
At their booth at the Boston Book Fest, One Story encouraged attendees to create an ever-changing collaborative short story; each passerby was invited to add one sentence. You can read the results, the completed Exquisite Corpse collaborative story on the One Story blog.
Wouldn’t it would be fun to see what we (you, me, readers of She Is Too Fond of Books, people who happen onto this post via a Google search) would produce running a similar experiment?!
I’ll start with a sentence, and everyone who comments will grow the story by adding a sentence of their own.
As the day goes on, I’ll transfer comments to the main part of this post, so we see some continuity, but you’ll have to read down through the comments before you add your sentence, in case I’m not caught up. I’ve turned comment moderation off, so everything should come through in order. Let’s see how we do; jump on, join in!
I tried getting the starting sentence through one of the many random sentence generators that are online, but, they were just silly! Let’s start with:
“Ugh, Monday again!” I thought, as I rolled over and hit, literally hit, the snooze button on the clock-radio.
Your turn!
Update 5pm 11/9/09: Please have fun with this, but keep fairly mainstream. I reserve the right to edit anything that I wouldn’t write (anything I wouldn’t want my kids to read), and to delete attempts to shanghai the storyline for a personal agenda.
Here’s the work in progress:
“Ugh, Monday again!” I thought, as I rolled over and hit, literally hit, the snooze button on the clock-radio. Why was I feeling so aggressive this morning? Then the gut-wrenching horrors of yesterday came flooding back.
Not even wishful thinking could make the sight of my husband in the arms of my best friend a dream. Losing both of my best friends in one fell swoop was simply not a good way to start a week.
But, hey, it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming; I’ve been fooling myself for quite some time. What interesting creatures we humans are, able to see so much, or so little, depending on our psychological needs.
I’d convinced myself the perfume I smelt on his shirts was just the cheap kind counter girls attacked shoppers with, to be fair it probably was, Sandra had a cheap streak.
Forget about the snooze button – I reached out again and turned off the alarm. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed, but it was pretty unlikely that I’d fall asleep again now…although that was the ONLY thing I wanted to do. Well, not the only thing, but castration was frowned upon in my small town.
And then it hit me, glue was what I needed — the horrible once-it-comes-in-contact-with-the-skin kind that’s impossible to remove without surgery. I closed my eyes and smiled.
I listened as my husband turned on the shower in our newly renovated, completely decadent bath/spa/suite, a project which had gone well beyond our original budget by far, and which we had just started to enjoy last week. This room had become an all consuming project in the last year. The shower was amazing, with multiple-positioned shower heads and a marble bench, a japanese soaking tub (which was well worth the $8000 we had spent on it), heated floors, towel racks and a sauna. This room had a majestic view of the Malibu coastline, with floor to ceiling windows which had to be installed via an enormous construction crane. Our neighbors would probably not be speaking to us any time soon. Not that we cared.
My husband came into the room and said, “Honey, get in the shower and stop having those dreams about home improvements, or we’re going to be late.”
I sat up and realized it had been a dream. I looked at my husband angrily and said, “Stay away from Sandra or I will tell her how your large hands don’t mean at all what she thinks they do.” John’s face twisted in anger,” You’re having that dream again too. I told you I only like Sandra as a friend. I could never see her THAT way.”
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