#12: microfiction & multimedia art
It's okay to cry :)
I’m afflicted by the most common disease of the 21st century: a constant need to present my best, most digestible self. I want to be liked, even if it means I hide my guts in the junk drawer whenever company’s coming. Social media’s turned me (and maybe you?) into a contradiction. We post, we write, we share everything - so long as it’s not too personal for everyone else swiping past.
This week was a doozy for me. Can anything wound you quite like family? I don’t think so. I cried so much, I’m starting to get abs. And like most people, my response to grief is usually hiding from the internet, texting a few friends, and reemerging a day later with Likeable™ pictures of my balcony or my art or Rhody. But this week, I leaned the fuck into being chronically online. I shared. I overshared. If someone asked what was up, I told them what the fuck was up.
Y’all, it was a superpower. What a release, the magic of being OK with not being OK, and remembering that one day, we’ll die, so does it really matter if someone misunderstands you or thinks you’re dramatic or wishes they hadn’t asked? No.
They see you today, but not tomorrow.
I don’t know why this surprised me so much, but it turns out that sharing and crying and being an unapologetic mess is a boon for your creativity. This week I went ham on the art front. I edited dozens of pages in my novel, often working on it over coffee in the morning and falling asleep at night sprawled across it on the couch or in bed1. I wrote you all the vulnerable microfiction below. I got experimental with mixed media paintings for my patrons’ mailboxes.
If things keep going this well, I may just have to dredge up more things to cry about! Send me the movies that gut you, STAT.
Art I mailed in August:
Kind of like my carefully crafted ~fun-but-don’t-look-too-close~ e-persona, I’m usually a deliberate and meticulous visual artist. I spend a ding-a-ling amount of time on paintings and stress out about where it’s headed before I even put brush to canvas. I’ve had this one painting in my head for years and have never tried to sketch it once.
But not this time, baby. This week I followed my gut.
The results (much like my gut) were wonderfully weird.
I started with a layer of watercolors. While they were wet, I pressed arugula leaves on top, letting them dry and give those fun leaf prints you see above. Then, I painted over the watercolor base in acrylic (except for where the leaf prints came through).
When THAT was dry, I drew over the whole thing with pen and pastel.
I love them :). I can’t wait to mail these weirdos to my patrons, and I hope they enjoy the results as much as I cherished the process.
The votes are in!
Patrons and paid subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:
Action: people watching
Word: fringe
This combo immediately sent my brain to the mall. I was thinking food courts, nosy folks, cowboys. But people watching while slurping a soda felt too passive. I had so much energy (and a sick sculpted bod from my Crying Regimen); I had to channel it all somewhere. So instead of choosing the people watcher as my MC, I explored how people watching impacts the ones being scrutinized, instead.
The story: body dysmorphia and politicians’ wives
Here’s the postcard I wrote on:
And here’s the story I wrote:
Just in case, here’s the transcription:
Today was the kind of day so hot my sandals stuck to the pavement outside and my jacket clung to my arms with sweat even in the cool of the dressing room.
The senator Linda worked for was hosting a cocktail hour and spouses had to come. Some bullshit about a family-friendly image to uphold.
Linda’d begged me to wear short sleeves. “It’ll be over 90 tonight, baby. The thing’s outdoors. And, again, there’s nothing wrong with your arms.”
I hate when she says that. 1), no. 2), “nothing wrong” means nothing right either, which means something’s wrong and she’s too chickenshit to say what. I love her, I do, but secretly, our love loses a little of its juice every time she lies to me like that.
Somehow she’d coerced me, and a sleeveless dress - my hell - crowded my dressing room, Linda waiting outside the door. I put it on. If I avoided my top half, it wasn’t so bad. Black, beaded fringe at the knee? I studied myself waist-down, ignoring my arms, which are thick and misshapen, pocked with dimples. The lumpy fat dribbles around my elbows and tapers at my wrists, which are normal. Shapely, even.
I’m not fatphobic. Politicians’ wives aren’t fatphobic. This is different. My arms are wrong.
Linda knocked. “Well?”
“It’s-” I swear to God, my arm dimples had doubled.
“You look amazing,” she said through the door.
“You can’t even see me.”
“I know that booty though,” she said.
I laughed despite myself, avoiding my eye in the mirror. “OK.”
When I opened the door, Linda, my linda Linda, beamed. “There she is.”
With one sculpted arm, she led me to the big mirrors that show you from all sides. Considering how happy it made her, maybe my arms weren’t that lumpy. In the soft lighting, I was half graceful. I could picture myself: the politician’s wife holding a martini (I’ll pretend to like martinis) and laughing, not worrying once about my upper arms, which were as normal as everyone claims.
In the mirror, 2 women (stupid perfect) whispered by the nearby racks. They were watching my arms, which were all misshapen once again. My throat tightened.
Linda wrapped her arms around me, oblivious as ever. “Perfect, right?”
That night, I laugh at some joke Linda’s senator makes and I drink a martini. It tastes like shit.
And all night long, I sweat inside my cardigan.
Write a story yourself
Woof.
Now it’s your turn! Write a postcard-sized story that follows the prompt (action: people watching; word: fringe) and share it here.
Your story can be happy or bleak or sci-fi or experimental. It can be as short as five words or as many as a few hundred. You can type it, you can write it on a postcard-sized wedge of printer paper, you can use a crayon. You do you! Your big goal is just to make some fiction brief enough to fit on a postcard.
To take the pressure off a perfect first draft, I trace my postcard onto scrap paper and brainstorm there, so I know it fits on the card. I wrote three drafts of this story before I transcribed the final version.
Challenge yourself with a time limit - I gave myself about twenty hours and am happy with how it turned out. Try 24 hours, 48 hours, or maybe 72. In my opinion, short time crunches save you from overworking a fun exercise and encourage you to put pen to page.
When you’re finished writing your own story featuring people watching and fringe, share it with me in the comments! If you’re feelin’ shy, reply to this email directly and I’ll be able to marvel at your work in private :).
That’s all, folks!
If you enjoyed today’s fiction, my final challenge to you today is to forward this email to one person you know who might appreciate the story, too.
All my love forever,
Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart <3
PS,
To slake your microfiction thirst, here’s this incredible piece of microfiction called "Something Else" by Ashley Hutson. The voice, the ice cream scoop, the “blah blah blah” - I fell in love with it about a week and a half ago and can’t stop reading it. The tab is open on my laptop and I’ve read it just about every other day. You should too :)
Does that bode well for the pacing? In my defense, it was always past midnight.