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My 61-Word Birthday Story Cake and Candles

My 61-Word Birthday Story

  12+   As a regular swimmer, I set birthday challenges to match my age in laps from 55 in 2017 to 57 in 2019. (Let's skip 2020!) Then, after tearing both shoulders, I read 59 chapters in 2021 and 60 in 2022. But I wanted to do something different when I turned 61 on 30 March this year. So I wrote a 61-word birthday story.

I've written a lot of microfiction since discovering the genre when reviewing Susan McCreery's collection, Loopholes, for Writing NSW in 2017. As I quoted in the review, Wiktionary.org defines it as:

"Fiction that has a significantly shorter than average length." Synonyms include drabble, flash fiction, flashfic, short-short story, sudden fiction and even twitterature.

Shorter Short Stories

After the Loopholes review, I revisited some shorter short stories from my ideas folder that I felt fitted the microfiction genre and shared them on Tall And True:

Two of the five are similar-length stories to the microfiction in Loopholes. But the other three are longer, 400 to 460-word pieces.

And this underscores the elasticity of the definition of the genre, which also encompasses my favourite regular writing challenge, the 500-word Furious Fiction run by the Australian Writers' Centre (Writers' Centre).

Even Shorter Pieces

As I grew more confident writing microfiction, I started sharing even shorter pieces, like those found in Loopholes:

More Microfiction

One of my shorter microfiction pieces was among the winners of a Twitter challenge by Writing NSW in November 2021 to celebrate their 30th Anniversary, #30words30days30years.

I wrote the longer, 100-word The Blank Screen for another Writing NSW brief in February 2022, "Write a love letter to your writing community", reflecting how I interact with the #WritingCommunity on Twitter!

And I combined three microfiction pieces into an episode of my Tall And True Short Reads storytelling podcast, Three Minute Microfiction (Episode 16, March 2021), and shared a blog post about it on Tall And True.

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My 61-Word Story

Drawing on all my microfiction experience, could I write a 61-word story for my birthday?

I'm 61 today. Will you swim 61 laps? No, I've torn my shoulders. 61 pushups? My shoulders, remember! Jog? No, my knees will seize. Ride 61 kilometres? Are you joking!? Then, why not read 61 chapters? Because it makes reading a chore. So what will you do? I'll write a 61-word story and be grateful I'm here to write it.

Did I enter these words on my computer on 30 March? No, but I composed the story in my head on the day. And setting aside the usual editing changes, it's how I visualised it, especially the ending.

So I'm claiming I met my birthday challenge to write a 61-word story. And thankfully (and with luck), I've got another year before the next one!

PS. I'm participating in April's #30Words30Days writing challenge on Twitter, tweeting a 30-word story inspired by a daily prompt. And I'll blog about this, with my stories, after April.

© 2023 Robert Fairhead

Thanks to Pexels for the Happy Birthday candles and cake image from Pixabay.com.

N.B. You may like to read more about my Tall And True Short Reads storytelling podcast. 

Robert is a writer and editor at Tall And True and blogs on his eponymous website, RobertFairhead.com. He also writes and narrates episodes for the Tall And True Short Reads storytelling podcast, featuring his short stories, blog posts and other writing from Tall And True.

Robert's book reviews and other writing have appeared in print and online media. In 2020, he published his début collection of short stories, Both Sides of the Story. In 2021, Robert published his first twelve short stories for the Furious Fiction writing competition, Twelve Furious Months, and in 2022, his second collection of Furious Fictions, Twelve More Furious Months. And in 2023, he published an anthology of his microfiction, Tall And True Microfiction.

Besides writing, Robert's favourite pastimes include reading, watching Aussie Rules football with his son and walking his dog.

He has also enjoyed a one-night stand as a stand-up comic.

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There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~ Maya Angelou

Tall And True showcases the writing — fiction, nonfiction and reviews — of a dad and dog owner, writer and podcaster, Robert Fairhead. Guest Writers are also invited to share and showcase their writing on the website.

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