Prompt #80
Numbered Stories
Hello, Monday-ers!
Hey, all. Hope everyone’s hanging in there. These are very hard days for many of us. I know we will get through this, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. I am so sad for those being hauled away, split from their families, sent to places unknown. The streets here in Los Angeles feel empty. So many people staying home, afraid to be in public. I spend a lot of time feeling very down. My heart keeps breaking, over and over again.
Thanks, as always, for being here. This little community means a lot to me and none of it works without you.
Sorry to start the week off so bleak. I’m going to do my best to have a productive week, full of as much awe and wonder as I can muster. I hope you are able to do the same. xoxoxo
And now, onto the prompt:
From the archive (edited)
This week, we’ll be working with another story form: the numbered story.
Here’s how it goes:
In a numbered story, you number your sentences (or your paragraphs) like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. You put the numbers right on the page, as though you are making a list from your sentences.
This form seems deceptively simple. All you have to do is number your sentences (or paragraphs) as you write. Easy, right? Well, yes, in a sense. But the very fact that the sentences are numbered makes each one seem to count more. To carry more weight. Your sentences can’t hide this way. Each is equal to another.
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
The first is called “This is How You Leave Him,” by Holly Pelesky, published online at monkeybicycle.net. Go have a read!
Do you see what I mean about the weight of each sentence in a numbered story? Some of the sentences are strange—they begin with a small letter. One sentence toward the end is only a fragment of a sentence. These all help add to the feeling of this woman’s broken, fragmented life—or at least I think they do. None of the sentences are extraneous.
Here’s another story for you to look at:
It’s called “Shit To Do with a Wedding Dress,” by Angela Readman and can be found at Smokelong Quarterly. This story is both a “numbered story” (it has sentences that are numbered) and a list story (it’s a list of… what to do with an unneeded wedding dress). Take a look.
I happen to love this story—the way it takes us on a journey through grief without saying the word “grief.” In fact, the story never tells us what happened, though we somehow understand that the dreams that come with a wedding dress don’t always come true.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write your own “numbered” stories.
Here are some possible titles for you to play with (or feel free to come up with your own!):
“Ten Reasons Why…..”
“The Nine Sins of…..”
“Eleven Ways to…..”
“Twenty Things to Tell Your….”
“Top Ten Ways to….”
“Ideas for Making a …..”
“Special Topics in….”
“Seven Times I Tried to…”
“What to do instead of…”
You can write your story as a list, the way Readman did with the wedding dress story.
You can simply number your sentences, as Pelesky has done.
You can also write in numbered paragraphs, if that seems to fit your story better.
As always, 400 words max in the Comments section.
This finally, is my final list. Fini list. End List. No, there will not be another list. This is it.
1) As discussed earlier, the money is all set to disperse automatically. You don’t have to do anything, just watch your bank account until it shows up. No lawyers, no probate, nothing.
2) Storage Locker #212 at Armstrong Storage. Sorry about that. But it’s a small one, really a closet with a few leftover odds and ends. A gas can, some remaindered books of mine, and the tent I used on the PCT come to mind.
3)I never did decide between the composting option, or cremation. I always liked the idea of my ashes starting a glacier, then following the meltwater down to the sea. The regular seasonal meltwater, not climate change meltwater if you can manage that. So you guys will have to decide, and trust I will agree. Or would have.
4)Now, there is some unfinished business, and as my heirs I trust you will attend to these matters with the characteristic responsibility you inherited from me.
a) look up Kathy Meserve and apologize to her for the thing that happened on the
playground in third grade. She’ll know what you’re talking about.
b) ditto Frankie Frankens and tell him I always knew it was him that stole my bike
and I’d like to know if he evidences any remorse.
c) ditto Clair Conover (nee Appledore) and tell her, kindly. I’m sorry I didn’t show for our
Wedding. I really did get a flat tire and the experience so deflated me I just, well . . .
d) there’s something buried in the backyard. From the big maple ten feet true north. True
Not magnetic. It’s not buried very deep.
5)No service, but if you do, please play music by these musicians. Bob Dylan, The Band, Allman Brothers, Pink Flloyd, Mark Knophler. Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust.
6)It feels like I’m forgetting some things . But I guess it won’t matter, in the end.
Nine Lives
1. I am a dancer with the Ballet de Buenos Aires. After 2 cups of strong coffee and a plain yogurt, I stretch. I stop by my grandma’s on the way to rehearsal, to bring her a few groceries. She worries about me, but I worry about her.
2. I work as an assistant to a trader in Shanghai. Mr. Chen is difficult, always contradicting himself. Still, I am learning a lot, and have a moped to come to work instead of a bicycle. I hope to get a car before winter.
3. I am selling fruit at a stand outside of Dakar. My daughter has a toothache and I have no money for the dentist. My husband is a truck driver, and when I break for lunch I will run to Western Union and see if he has sent money.
4. I am a priest in a small Brazilian town, who must officiate at the funeral of Maria Gomes, who has left 5 children behind in the care of an alcoholic husband. He should have been kinder to her when she was alive.
5. I am an overweight Black ninth-grader in Lubbock. I am in detention, as I don’t like reading out loud so played the fool in English. Here, at least, I get to draw, which is what I love to do more than anything.
6. I am the wife of a Thai Diplomat in New York. He is always at work so I spend my days in museums or shopping. Today I meet the wife of the Finnish Consul for an early dinner and a play. I am having strange feelings about her, and she about me, I think. I feel so much less alone in the world when I am around her.
7. I am a Japanese salaryman, taking the train home from Tokyo. I hardly see my wife and son, and hope dinner is not full of silence. All the way home I stare out the window and wish I had been an architect instead of an accountant.
8. I am a homeless orphan in Calcutta. My mother was a prostitute who OD’d. I will be snorting glue underneath a bridge, and hopefully I will not awake until morning. Or maybe not at all.
9. I am a writer in L.A., sad because my French cousin just died of cancer. Life is so fragile.