Sticky Notes Blog

A blog of writing news, tips, and inspiration from Fat Plum

Winner of McSweeney's Twenty-Minute Stories Contest

The winning story has been published online: "Untitled," by David Kennerly. It is so short and tied together that it seems a shame to excerpt any of it, but I post the first sentence to help draw you in.

He had always tried to be a gentleman, courteous, respectful in the most thorough way, and believed he was doing his utmost to continue this philosophy when he realized he was having a heart attack, there was no way he could land the plane anywhere else, and he saw the beautifully ordered expanse of backyards open up before him like a shining path, the center line composed of fences and lit by the glint of the sun.

If you have not already, consider using the framework of the contest as a writing exercise. Here is how David Daley, who created the contest, explains it:

Say what you will about the luxury of having time to write, but give me a deadline. Deadlines take some of the fear out of writing. Sure, give all those monkeys laptops and a Starbucks card and they'll eventually come up with the works of Shakespeare. But what if you give them twenty minutes and then see what they've got? That was the idea behind the section of twenty-minute stories included in Issue 12 of McSweeney's.

So I asked almost 100 writers to do exactly that?to write three twenty-minute stories. An hour of writing. Think about it first, if you must, but then go. At first, people recoiled in terror. Who could write a story in twenty minutes? But many of them gave it a try, exploring all sorts of crazy ideas and voices and approaches, and they wrote them in shopping malls and on subways, and anywhere they happened to be.

Posted by Cindy on May 25, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Inspiration