Hello!

Welcome to The Epic! I am launching this blog as a manifesto for and a guide to living well. The title and motto of the blog are taken from the Epicureans, at least some of whom believed in the notion that not one minute of the future was guaranteed to them and that as a result they had the duty to live life to its fullest every moment.

I believe in discovering fun and pleasurable things wherever I find myself each day and I am told I have a knack for unearthing them. My hope is that by sharing in my pleasures and some of my ways of finding them you will begin to collect all the riches that lie in the moments of your life. They are there. Take them! All our lives should be.....Epic.

Monday, June 15, 2009

My First Story Rejected By "Six Sentences"

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
-Chaucer

I love the micro-fiction web site/literary journal Six Sentences. The idea of it is to write a story [no poems allowed] in only six sentences. Perfect for late-night, bar napkin authors like me. I am always thrilled at the creativity I find published there. My first submission to 6S was rejected but I give it to you today just because I like it. I hope you will too.

Dinner Time

Staring out the window, on tiptoes, I see you walk by wearing a black pleated skirt and a white blouse with dots. You are prettier now than thirty years ago. When we kissed once during that last, perfect, Autumn afternoon. Before everything became...complicated. A sound distracts me as they unlock the door and bring in exactly what I requested for dinner. When I look back to the window, the shadows are longer and you are lost to view.

This makes my batting average for submissions to literary journals a whopping 0.00. None for five. I get a lot of enjoyment out of scribbling on those bar napkins though. It keeps me from other, less wholesome, pursuits. Taken in an Epic light, then, the writing and also the rejections are a positive and even a healthy thing. And they help me to "lerne" and hone the craft.

5 comments:

~Tessa~Scoffs said...

Condolences on your rejected piece. (I love it by the way). I don't dare submit anything. Let's see the other ones!

Ben said...

I liked it. It has all the necessary ingredients. Setting. Detail. Characters. Plot. Tension. Denouement. Resolution. The genre? Mystery-romance, I think.

Uncle Beefy said...

Well, M. Lane... I LOVED it! Amazing to squeeze that kind of emotional content in only 6 sentences! I am rarely that articulate and never that succinct! Well done...just the same!

~Tessa~Scoffs said...

Mr. Lane! I've done it! You inspired me to submit something to 6S! Stay tuned....

M.Lane said...

Mrs Scoffs!!! That you loved it means more than you could know. AND, you smacked the ball right into 6S's court!!!! GOOD FOR YOU. Bonne Chance!!!

Ben, thank you. I feel stoked by your comment on this little paragraph [really taken from a bar napkin].

Mon Oncle, thank you so much. Now, if only I could draw and make SUPERB cupcakes...

ML