The Drabble Liked My Dabbling!

Drabble, flash fiction, humor 3 Minutes

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I am a fairly verbose writer who’s long been wedded to my nonfiction status and believed myself incapable of writing fiction.

But on just my second try, my bite-sized piece of fiction has been accepted by The Drabble, a blog featuring fiction, nonfiction, and poetry of 100 words or fewer. That’s quite nice, so I’d like to tell you about it.

The story began a few months ago, when I’d been blogging for just about a year. Suddenly, a strange black ink blot sort of thing appeared in my email. Some of you may recognize it, as it inspired my first Drabble effort, titled “What Is…?,” published here on July 1.

That ink blot, which I find ominous, is The Drabble avatar. They’re kinda mysterious there, so I’m not sure who’s behind The Drabble. Whoever he/she/they are (I’ll go with “they”), they had “liked” two of my lengthy nonfiction pieces.

I looked them up, and I then learned from other sources about the fascinating literary history of the drabble (going back to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and including a foray by Monty Python, as I explained here, in the Note beneath “What Is…?”). So I decided to try. 

I sent “What Is…?” to The Drabble and, true to their word, they responded within a month. That one didn’t work for them, but they encouraged me to try again. 

This effort occurred just as I was becoming aware (in a “Duh!” moment) that I was surrounded by short fiction. Indeed, “flash fiction”—brief little stories—are all the rage in the blogosphere.

I’ve since also become acquainted with fictional “prompts” that offer writers the challenge of weaving tales around individual words, photos, or maxims, with story limits set at 25 words, 37 words, and the like.

I’ve never tried one, but people seem to enjoy composing them. Turns out there are oodles of writers conjuring lots and lots of teensy tales—many of them very good.

And here I must mention Tetiana and Tony, who blog together as “Unbolt Me” and surely take the virtual prize: they often write stories that are six words long. As I suggested to them in a comment, six-word stories seem to me like hijacked haiku and come dangerously close to being a blank page. Yet they do it–provocatively!

I now see that there are even prompts for six-worders,  and the prolific Fandango, who’s full of fun and ingenuity, frequently responds to those. There are undoubtedly many others dabbling diminutively whose talents I haven’t yet had the pleasure to discover.

But I digress. I published my second short fictional post on my blog in August and called it “The Limitation of Limits.” It is actually a satire on the genre.

Fortunately, The Drabble folks have a sense of humor because they informed me a few days ago that they’d accepted it for publication, and it would appear that very afternoon. 

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Again true to their word, it did appear. For one day “The Limitation of Limits” was the most prominent Drabble on their post.

Each day, a newly featured Drabble assumes that premium real estate. So if you check out my Drabble there, you now have to look under “Older Posts.” (It’s dated October 31, 2019.) And if you like it, please feel free to click Like—and comment if you so choose. Here’s the link.

The Drabble printed my original post verbatim, albeit with a different illustration from mine (above), and the descriptor I provided:

“After decades writing what others asked of me, I am thrilled to have the freedom to follow my curiosity wherever it takes me. Not incidentally, I’ve always wanted my words to change the world—preferably for the better!” – the writer

Thanks to all of you for your continuing support through thick prose, thin fiction—and a smattering of poetry. Who knows what’ll spring up here next? I certainly don’t, though I have some ideas and works in progress. Last week it was my confessions of beetlecide (concluding with my first haiku).

I try to stay true to my self-imposed mission–and hope you think I hit the mark more often than not: to encourage “Dialogue to Inform, Enlighten, and/or Amuse You and Me.” Stay tuned…

Annie

 

Published by annieasksyou

I've been a nonfiction writer for many years, exploring diverse topics that pique my curiosity, as noted in my first blog posting (Greetings!). I'm seeking dialogue with others committed to joining me in this exploration, sharing my conviction that different views can be exchanged in a respectful, civil discourse where we can learn from one another and be agreeable, even when we disagree. These postings depend for their enrichment on your participation: your ideas, insights, knowledge, opinions, and personal stories.

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34 thoughts on “The Drabble Liked My Dabbling!”

  4. Annie — you educate, entertain, and maybe above all and certainly with the short, short fiction you’re playing with, inspire me to sit my rear down and get to it. Thank you, my dear. Appreciated.

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    1. “Inspire” you? Nothing could please me more. Please share with me the fruits of your inspiration, which I’m sure will be delicious.
      And thank you, so very much, for your meaningful support, which continues to bolster me.

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  8. How super cool for you!! Congratulations! If I missed the longer story (an earlier annieasksyou post perhaps?) I’d love to be directed toward it. If you have not written it, I assume you have your reasons. In any case, bravo to you for dabbling!!

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    1. Thank you so much! No, there’s no longer story; I merely gently spoofed this short fiction form. In truth, I’m not sure I’m ready to stretch myself to longer fiction at this point. But drabbling is fun; I recommend it!

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    1. Thank you, my fun new virtual friend! And thanks for the likes, which are so encouraging.

      Here’s something that tickled me and I think you’ll appreciate: The Drabble “liked” my “The Drabble Liked My Dabbling” post. Does that qualify as a meta event?

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. The post was already meta to begin with. The Drabble liking it, that’s doubly meta. If they posted it to their site, then it would create what is called the Drostre effect, and something would be irretrievably damaged.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. By the way, I had to look up droste, so thank you for that educational tidbit.
        But if the Internet is awash with cocoa residue, how will you and I convey our poetry, prose, and drabbling?

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    2. I tried to do this remotely—assuming I could add the post to my menu, but I can’t see how to do that. I wonder if that’s why there’s no comments box.
      You wouldn’t happen to know how I remedy this issue? Otherwise, it’ll have to wait til tomorrow night, and I fear I’ll have lost all that wisdom.

      Really nice of you to notify me!

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      1. I don’t know if you have the same WordPress setup as mine. Within the My Site section of my setup, there’s a heading called Posts. If I go to any individual post within Posts, along the right-side are a bunch of settings and options. If I open More Options, there’s a box that I can check to allow or not to allow comments.

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