{"id":22845,"date":"2020-06-06T16:54:52","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T20:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=22845"},"modified":"2020-06-27T10:04:51","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T14:04:51","slug":"revisiting-the-tiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/revisiting-the-tiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting the Tiny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/everydaybandw_699_20190826_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?resize=500%2C500&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22617\" style=\"float: right; width: 30%; margin-left: 1em;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/everydaybandw_699_20190826_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/everydaybandw_699_20190826_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/everydaybandw_699_20190826_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">A simple placeholder announcement for now&#8230; You may recall that last month, I entered a &#8220;100-word Microfiction Challenge.&#8221; (If you have no idea what this refers to, I first posted about it <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/working-in-the-small\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>; the, er, post-mortem post &#8212; as of the first round&#8217;s completion &#8212; is <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/microfiction-post-practice-obsession-random-story-ideas\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.) That contest&#8217;s organizers will announce the results of the first-round judging process on Wednesday, June 24. The top 20 (of no more than 100) participants in each group* will advance to the second round; this runs from 11:59 p.m. Friday, June 26, to 11:59 the next night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<em>all of which is to say<\/em>: I hope to occasionally post a new practice story here at <em>Running After My Hat<\/em> over the next three weeks. Sadly, I can&#8217;t promise that this will be to your benefit; odds are, after all, you won&#8217;t even get to experience vicariously the thrill (such as it is) of my advancing to Round 2. And as you already know from last month&#8217;s eight practice samples, the quality of the stories themselves will be uneven. No, these practice sessions are mostly for me: to force me into something like the mindset required to &#8220;write short,&#8221; on random assignments of no more than 100 words each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I drew my first one of these practice assignments last night:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: comedy<\/li><li><strong>Word<\/strong>: <em>stir<\/em><\/li><li><strong>Action<\/strong>: yanking my chain<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;and so I&#8217;ll post a micro-story sometime today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you for continuing to indulge me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>_____<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>* For the record, I was in group 66, consisting of 95 participants. (All but eight groups included 95 entrants; those eight had 96.) My group&#8217;s assignment was to write a 100-word (or shorter) story in the <em>romance <\/em>genre, featuring some form of the word <em>forget<\/em>, and involving the act of <em>roller skating<\/em>. <s>I&#8217;ll post<\/s> I&#8217;ve posted the story in <a href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/nyc-midnight-microfiction-challenge-what-goes-around\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an entry here<\/a> after the first-round results are announced, regardless of whether or not I&#8217;ll be going onto Round 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A simple placeholder announcement for now&#8230; You may recall that last month, I entered a &#8220;100-word Microfiction Challenge.&#8221; (If you have no idea what this refers to, I first posted about it here; the, er, post-mortem post &#8212; as of the first round&#8217;s completion &#8212; is here.) That contest&#8217;s organizers will announce the results of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4701,5,5128,105,372],"tags":[298,1417,1443,4752],"class_list":{"0":"post-22845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-my-photography","7":"category-06_writing","8":"category-flash-and-microfiction","9":"category-short-fiction","10":"category-style-and-craft","11":"tag-writing-exercises","12":"tag-writing-contests","13":"tag-writing-prompts","14":"tag-nyc-midnight","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5Wt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22845"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23075,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22845\/revisions\/23075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}