Those thoughts are germinating after all. After some (many) months of restless inactivity, there appear to be some tentative steps towards progress. I have now started 6 short stories, one finished but requiring complete overhaul, 5 of them unfinished in various stages, waiting for resolution. It is not hard for me to come up with ideas for stories, but whenever I get them, I get stuck sooner or later - the story does not know where it wants to go, and any attempts to force a direction is met… Continue

So after an elaborately staged long hiatus from doing the trying-to-write-daily-for-10-minutes thingie I think I'm back and re-focused. Not as determined to keep "this" up regulary but to instead focus on the three short stories that I have been lying around since last year and two ones that I want to see develop (i.e., no clue where they are going to go story-wise). The first story that I completed as part of my course last summer is not utterly unsavageable after all: It was just that it had… Continue

"You still look the same."



"You too."



It wasn't true - twenty years passed by and there was no chance that their faces had remained as youthful as it had been back in high school. They knew that but behind the aged exterior that had been altered by worries, stress and time, they felt the same and recognized the same in each other.



It was seemless in the manner in which they fell back into their own adolescent roles and the familiar dynamics that had played out between… Continue

Some people are born cruel, and some people are born targets.



When Dora was small, the other kids always wanted to pull her pig tails. Not because they were so cute but because they wanted to see how hard they had to pull before the little girl would cry.



School was not any better. Most of the teachers were kind but Mrs. Gretwald seemd to take an unusual amount of pleasure from the blame that she would heap upon Dora whenever she had a chance. Her parents wondered why her… Continue

One, two, three, one, two, three, four, one. Up and down, up and down, up twice, then down.



Her hands had almost stopped trembling - the tremor was only noticeable if you stared at the same spot for several seconds. Today, only one more routine was enough and the hands would return to normal.



Coffee was done. She poured the coffee into her favourite mug, up to exactly one inch from the rim. Two sugars, stirred left twice, right once,… Continue