Fiction Mondays: Getting Back to Short Stories

The past few months, I haven't worked on short stories at all. I've been working on everything else, and the whole time I've missed the format and the challenge of short stories. I haven't sent much out, haven't revisited anything I worked on and set aside. That's all over now.

Maybe I just wasn't feeling inspired--not that I didn't have ideas, just didn't have to focus or energy to execute them. But last night, I remembered a story I began writing a long time ago, about a guy who meets a girl who spends her time dumpster-diving. They meet a guy sleeping in a dumpster who believes the guy is some incarnation of Mercury. I liked the idea, but I just didn't know what to do with it. I now have a clearer idea, and I'm really excited to tackle it.

So this is just an announcement that my short-story mindset, dormant for several months, is kicking back on. Expect announcements on the process.

Finally: I am thinking about getting another tattoo, of the dove pierced by an arrow from the cover of Flannery O'Connor's "Everything that Rises Must Converge." Here's the image:


I'll need to tinker with the image and see if I can find a full version without the clipped-off wing, but I think it's going to go near the rib I broke a few years ago and the arrow will be red. It's a symbol for O'Connor's idea that violence precedes Grace (the dove is the Holy Spirit), which is an idea that really influences my writing.