Something Small

Hello!

It’s been a productive few weeks on my end, and I’m excited to share what’s been happening.

Since my last newsletter, I’ve continued experimenting with smaller form tanka poetry—writing two or three pieces a week and queuing one up every Tuesday.

I’m still finding my footing in the form, but the journey has been enjoyable. And it’s pushed me towards another condensed form: micro fiction.

Getting to micro

Micro fiction is generally considered to be stories under 300 words, sometimes as few as 100. In my case, I’m aiming for around 200—about two pages of an A6 notebook.

It was the notebook’s size that really started this experiment. I picked a few up in the fall and bought more in Japan—they’re small enough to fit in a pocket, so I carry them everywhere.

That size pushes me toward tighter writing and shorter entries. It's already shaped how I journal, write poetry, and take notes. Writing short fiction in them felt like the natural next step.

Learning micro

But it took a bit to figure it out. Early attempts were too loose, too flat, or too long.

Things fell into place when I took Polaroid—the story I published in December—and compressed it into two pages. I had to make decisions. Story elements were sacrificed, and I had to leave a lot outside the frame. But I was happy with the result.

I tried again with an older story, Arthur's Dream from years ago, and it taught me more—which words mattered and which didn’t, and how to craft the story’s shape within those two pages. Also, at two hundred words, I could read it out loud over and over as I edited.

Most importantly, I loved that it was a puzzle to be solved, and every element was part of the solution.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ That feeling kept me coming back.

The micro unlock

I’ve made it no secret that since my sister died last July, I've been struggling in my writing. I had a queue of work, and then it disappeared.

Tanka poetry helped me find my footing again, and now, micro fiction has helped me further—eleven days in, and I already have 2 stories complete.

Part of what keeps me coming back is the low cost of entry. An idea that fails can be reworked or abandoned quickly, with no months lost on something that never gets finished.

And I’m taking stories that never quite worked and finding ways to bring them to life on two pages. That’s been more satisfying than I expected.

What’s next

So, the plan is to keep building the practice—a poem every Tuesday, a story every Saturday. Show up, add to the queue, stay consistent.

Somewhere down the road, I’d like to do a reading or two. Editing these out loud has made me want to share them that way—to a room, to people. That feels like the next thing worth working toward.

For now, though, I’m just glad to be writing again.

February writing:

• Polaroid (micro fiction version)
• I see the bodies (tanka version)
• Wrong Train
• The cat woke tonight
• I see the bodies No. 2
• Arthur's Dream

Thank you for reading.

Until next time,
David