No Novel November, Day 1


posted | about 2 minutes to read

tags: no novel november short story

For the last few years I’ve been at least tangentially aware of National Novel Writing Month, but haven’t ever participated; I find it really difficult to hold onto a single idea for that long, let alone flesh it out to the length of a novel. I was quite gratified to have an alternative brought to my attention this year - No Novel November, which Ellie Di Julio is organizing. Over the last few months I’ve really enjoyed learning more about microfiction; it takes a certain amount of creativity to cram a self-contained and compelling story into a single Tweet. If it’s something you’re interested in looking at, some of my favorite feeds include capsule_169 on Twitter and Teryl and V Corva on Mastodon (Victoria also wrote a really good book - Books and Bone, which you should absolutely check out).

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I ended up deciding that I’m going to at least try my hand at this! My goals: take 15 minutes or less every single day this month to write a story based on each day’s prompt and end up with a coherent scene. I’m not going to limit myself to 280 characters, but keeping them short is a priority. I may not share all the stories I write, but I want to write them all anyway, and I’ll certainly share some of them, at least. Like this one, the one that I’m posting right below this introduction!


Today’s prompt: permission

“Really, it’s okay. You can touch me.”

She thrust her head forward, adding action to her thus-far-ignored words, but this, too, went unmarked; she was starting to get frustrated. A few more seconds passed - “please? I’d really like it if you did.” - before she lost patience and leapt upwards.

As she nestled in on the surprised human’s lap, the hand finally, finally came down to pet her, and her purrs filled the room.