October 2023 Monthly Micro Shortlist

Well done to everyone who wrote and submitted a story this month and to the writers who made the longlist. Congratulations to the 10 writers who have gone through to the shortlist! The prompt word this month was SUN.

Vote for your favourite from these fab stories to win the surprise People’s Prize. Our judging team are busy re-reading to choose the winners of the cash prizes. Voting is open until 23.59 (UK time) on 23rd October 2023. Results will be announced on 24th. Good luck everyone! 


A Chance Meeting on Moore Beach

Christine didn’t talk to strangers; so when, in the orange-hued haze of first light, an old woman
approached, her muscles stiffened.

“Would you like a shell?” An outstretched hand cupped a chipped clam. “It’s not perfect, but,”
the woman turned it over, “just look at that purple .”

Christine clasped the shell, holding it between them. They watched as the rising sun illuminated
an iridescent layer, previously hidden. The old woman nodded and continued down the beach.

A seagull soared overhead. Her phone pinged. Pls forgive me. Christine exhaled and pocketed
the shell as the tide stretched to touch her toes.


Audabe

You lay the blanket across the sand. Moonlight rays shimmering with phosphorescent memories. Somewhere between dusk and dawn I feel your hand in mine, the warmth of your fingers, as I stretch my toes one last time to feel the tactility of grains against my skin. By morning I will be gone. You will fold me in the blanket, slip me back into the room from where you spirited me away, to be discovered as sun slips through slatted blinds. You’ll accept the call, already knowing the news of my passing and the mystery of the sand between my toes.


Eclipse

My mum’s an astronaut, studying solar flares. She’s somewhere so bright I can’t even look
without my eyes watering, but from down here I can blot her out with the tip of my thumb. That’s
called an eclipse.

People say I must be so proud of her. On Earth she glides through parties with her followers in
orbit, radiating a prickling heat that many mistake for warmth.

Personally I’ve always preferred the moon, although it can appear dusty and boring compared
to the sun. Pockmarked with scars, but well practiced in redirecting the sun’s excess light to
illuminate the darkness.


Lifting the Lid

The photographs were the hardest, the need to cull so many memories.

Her grief felt like that time in the playground, the eclipse, the disc of the moon covering the sun, the strange absence of light, of birdsong, the sense of unreality.

She pulled another box towards her, and there was her childhood in black and white, long-forgotten friends, Mrs Insley smiling in the 1961 class photo. She lifted it out, remembering how the kindly teacher had come to stand beside her as darkness had fallen – had sensed her distress. She reached for her bag and carefully placed it inside.


Never Let The Sun Go Down On Your Anger

Gran reckoned anger, left to fester, turned your insides bad. Best to nip it in the bud before you went to bed.

The Summer Mum left, taking only the new curate and the bump under her baggy tops, the air at Gran’s Bible class was thick with flies and gossip. I sat at the back, peeling corpses off fly papers and pulling off the legs. Later, I’d bake the bodies into scones to serve to the church ladies, passing them off as currants. I was a credit to Gran, the ladies said.

Somehow, I didn’t feel so angry, after that.


Orbiting Sol

People used to call before visiting. Now they appear saying, ‘just wondered how you’re doing,’ ‘just found these baby clothes in the attic’, ‘just cooked extra for dinner’. They orbit the cot, waiting for Sol to wake. You rotate through an endless cycle of eat, sleep, cry, while drooping flowers shed pollen on the white kitchen worktop.

You escape one morning craving birdsong, the chill of autumn air, the sight of a golden leaf twisting in the wind. But it’s your gut that’s twisting, and there’s a heavy, inexplicable pull deep inside your chest. At the street corner, you hesitate.


Scarab

“How does the sun roll across the sky?”, my brother asks as he hurls his ball against the yard wall. I tell him the Ancient Egyptians believed it was carried on the back of a scarab. We don’t mention the thunder in our stomachs or how Ma won’t rise until dusk or that if the big kids borrow his ball, he’ll be kicking bottles. We put our lips to the tap to ease the drought. “Later,” I tell him, “Ma might fry eggs.” I think of us dipping our forks in the orbs of their yolks to taste the summer.


The Burning Question

Gender identity freezes my heart, resulting in deep thinking and shallow, painful cuts. Confusion and uncertainty serve to magnify my desperation for answers. What am I?

Not knowing which way to turn, I look upwards shouting: “I love the sunshine.” The sun’s neutrality calms my anxieties.

Liberated, I chase my new, heavenly saviour around the beaches of Europe.

In France, Le Soleil is masculine. He heats up my body.
In Germany, Die Sonne is feminine. She wraps me in her rays.

If the sun isn’t clear about its identity, surely I can live a colourful life beneath its glorious rainbows.


The Complications of a Sunburst

Sometimes, I imagine them like a white-hot sun, mostly because at school, when Ms. Carruthers told us not to look at the sun directly, we did it anyway. See who could stand it the longest. We’d remove our Barbie sunglasses and squint until we had to blink, the aftermath glinting behind our lids in oil-spill rosettes.

Like stealing a bit of light, she used to say.

I imagine them like a sun, the headlights, because even though I wasn’t with her at the end, it makes me think she saw them and pretended. Closed her eyes.

Maybe, thought of me.


The dark side of the sun

There’s a lot of talk about how terrible the weather will be this summer, hot and windy, they say.

Hundreds of pictures of the last bad summer are still on your phone, saved in an album named ‘fires’ and sometimes you can’t help looking for that one picture of the crowd on the beach with the horse, the sky behind them and the sand around them and even the sea in front of them glowing some part of the spectrum of the colour orange. They were waiting for boats, for rescue.

As always, you wonder what happened to that horse.


Please vote using the form below. If you have any problems with the form, you can also vote via this link: https://form.responster.com/y3athW

Christmas Advent Comp 2023 Shortlist/Winners

Well done to the writers of the following stories that have gone through to the shortlist and been selected for the Advent Story Countdown! We will publish them once a day starting on 4th December. In advent calendar style, the prizes each writer has won will be announced on publication of the stories!

  • All I Want For Christmas by Cole Beauchamp
  • Boxing Day by Mairead Robinson
  • Cards for Christmas by Lucy Bignall
  • Christmas Realms by Fran Turner
  • Christmas Unravelled by Katie Holloway
  • Doctor, I’m In Trouble by Gordon Pinckheard
  • Kill a Tree by Mikki Aronoff
  • Lottie and me by Rhona Stephens
  • Notes to Self on Christmas Gifts Received and Subsequent New Year’s Resolutions by Taria Karillion
  • The Clicking Keeps me Company by Alan Kennedy
  • What I Learned from Blue Peter by Stephanie Percival
  • Writing Santa by Jan Kaneen

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

Monthly Micro Longlist – October 2023

Many thanks to everyone who submitted a SUN-inspired story this month. We had 65 submissions so the cash prizes are £70 for first prize and £46 for second.

Congrats to the writers of the following stories that have made the longlist. No telling which is yours though!

Longlisted Stories

  • A Chance Meeting on Moore Beach
  • Audabe
  • Eclipse
  • Helios
  • His Father’s Son
  • It’s the thought that counts
  • Lifting the Lid
  • Mary Poppins Willed Me Her Carpet Bag
  • Moulten
  • Never Let The Sun Go Down On Your Anger
  • Orbiting Sol
  • Scarab
  • Solar Eclipse
  • Sun Child
  • Sunflowers
  • Sunday Loves Monday, Monday Loves Thursday, Thursday Makes a Rainbow
  • Sunshine Digby has two left feet
  • The Burning Question
  • The Complications of a Sunburst
  • The dark side of the sun
  • The separation of sunsets

The shortlist will be online for voting on Monday. Good luck everyone!

September 2023 Monthly Micro Winners

Well done again to all who made it through to the shortlist this month and congratulations to our winners!

First Prize: Why My Big Sister Won ‘The City of The Future’ Art Competition by Mairead Robinson

Why we chose it: A sad and timely, but also hopeful micro

Second Prize: Two Boys, One Book, In Jim Crow’s Jackson by Fiona Dignan

Why we chose it: A poignant and powerful micro

People’s Prize: Two boys, one book, in Jim Crow’s Jackson

(Winner by just one vote this month!)


Shortlisted Stories


Mairead and Fiona win the cash prizes and Fiona also wins feedback on 1000 words.

We have a new workshop on the first Sunday of the month related to this competition for our community members to sharpen up their micro writing skills and get the prompt ahead of it going live on the website the next day. Join the community here.

Christmas Advent Comp 2023 Longlist

We’ve been having a festive time reading all of these stories! Thanks to everyone who submitted and swept us into the festive season already!

Congrats to the writers of the following stories who have made the longlist. No telling which is yours though!

Longlist

  • A Perfect Gift
  • Air quality poor, water contaminated, life not sustainable!
  • All I Want For Christmas
  • Bad Santa
  • Boxing Day
  • Cards for Christmas
  • Christmas Coitus
  • Christmas Realms
  • Christmas Unravelled
  • Doctor, I’m In Trouble
  • Kill a Tree
  • Lot 365
  • Lottie and me
  • Notes to Self on Christmas Gifts Received and Subsequent New Year’s Resolutions
  • Pas de dix; pas de probleme
  • Placing the Gold Doves
  • The Clicking Keeps me Company
  • The Great Impression
  • What I Learned from Blue Peter
  • Writing Santa
  • Zooming in for Christmas

We’ll be back with the shortlist soon! In the meantime, you have until 30th September 2023 to send us your HOPE stories for the next edition of WestWord. Submit here.

September 2023 Monthly Micro Shortlist

Vote for your favourite from these fab stories to win the surprise People’s Prize. Our judging team are busy re-reading to choose the winners of the cash prizes. Voting is open until 23.59 (UK time) on 25th September 2023. Results will be announced on 26th. Good luck everyone! 


Meeting Point

I suggest cascara, he points towards a lemonade.

I, a serpentine lane, he, borders drawn at right angles on old maps.

I slide down a funnel to the beach, he ramp walks to the mouth of the river.

I, a sand castle with red sand from the moon, he, a labourer digging a diamond mine.

The ring around Saturn, my gift. A moat with floating criss-cross stars, his choice.

Give me the tick-tack of knitting needles. The pulley silent for him, a cease-work order?

Sweaty, sweaty, sweaty on, humid nights. Same pinch, says he, drenched. I roll over in laughter.


Two Boys, One Book, In Jim Crow’s Jackson

Emmet knows the math book is raggedy, but his teacher doles them out like they’re candied yams. His fingers trace the name inside the cover. Randall. 

Emmet pictures a gold-curled boy claiming the book when it’s crisp new. 

“It’s no matter, numbers don’t change,” the teacher says. But Randall has already written the incorrect answers in the book. Emmet knows math comes at you true as a Mississippi morning. Emmet has learnt it’s words that lie. Like lynching can mean justice. The word separate can mean equal.

Emmet corrects Randall’s answers. His slim black fingers learning to make things right. 


A Beginner’s Guide To Displacement

Callie raises her hand long after other students give up. Mrs. Wilson announces, “Right again.” Later, Callie will sit alone at the lunch table working out an equation. Even later, she’ll graduate cumma sum laude in engineering, get hired by a top firm, and spend her weekends calculating power output and friction loss. On Mondays she’ll sit at a conference table. The project leader will ask a question. Callie will raise her hand. Her male coworkers will call out answers. She’ll accept a beer after work, rebuff sexual advances, and wonder what to do when the numbers don’t add up.


Instruction Manual For ‘Fitting In’ At Your New School

  • Make sure your mask is fitted correctly before leaving the house; set it to ‘fixed smile’; don’t allow any hairs to stray.
  • Keep your fiddle toys hidden in a secret pouch in your blazer. Only use in EXTREME emergency.
  • If you feel the urge to stim, pretend you are a statue: keep your hands by your sides; count to ten.
  • Don’t speak unless spoken to. Stick to subjects of interest to your peers. NEVER mention your niche hobbies.
  • When Mum asks how your day went, set mask to ‘I’m OK’.
  • Once you are alone in your room, you may self-combust.

Needs Must

We’re not sure who first came up with the idea, but we all applauded when the decision was made. We turned out with balloons, tight and shiny as blisters, the day the Pump was pieced together in the dead centre of town. Faced with the need for more and more sacrifices, the Pump has now streamlined the process. Of course, it takes at least two men to operate, three if there’s a struggle, and it isn’t without its heartbreak. But it’s efficient. There’s hardly any mess, now they’ve perfected the procedure. I’ve started a business selling earplugs, which is thriving. 


Why My Big Sister Won ‘The City Of The Future’ Art Competition

Everyone else drew gleaming skyscrapers, and spaceships, and astronauts zooming across the page with flaming red rocket packs, but she sketched a fairy castle beneath candy floss clouds, with white unicorns leaping through delicate blue mist. It ‘stood out’ the judges said.

And when we were sent home early from school six months later, to see our apartment building bomb-blasted into smouldering rubble, my sister led me away from the fires and sirens. We built a tiny palace from shattered concrete and broken glass, and galloped our winged steeds over twisted girders. For just a little while, it was beautiful.   


Hindsight

If, opening the fridge, you had noticed the last two eggs and decided to poach them, instead of cereal, or if I had not pointed out the baby sick stain on your shoulder, or if Eliza had not pleaded with you to hear her spellings, or if you had not paused to brush my hair off my tear-streaked face and tell me what a great job I was doing, then the woman who lost control of her Fiat Panda at 8.46am this morning would have ploughed into someone else’s life, and today would have been a day like any other.


My Name Was Different

I apologise to dad in the Arrivals Hall.

‘The flight was delayed. Hardly your fault, was it?’ He takes my backpack, saying, ‘That smell is familiar. How was Amsterdam?’

I describe cafés and riding bikes downhill without brakes. I don’t say that I arrived early at Schiphol, checked in, then fell asleep across metal chairs. Or that upon waking, my eyes opened directly into eyes the colour of Delft Blue, and we spoke fast, ignoring our lack of common language. Or that my name was different in Dutch, announced repeatedly by loudspeaker until I understood, rose and ran without turning.


Quiet

Mum doesn’t agree with enclosed/silent orders, nuns who waste their lives praying when they should be helping people. You silently dissent. Extreme nunhood is for you the ideal, unlike being in a rowdy family.

Books about nuns keep arriving from the Catholic Book Club. You know eighteen is old to be accepted for a noviciate. Best apply the moment you turn fifteen.

Or get a quiet job, buy a quiet flat/house, live a quiet life. And find quiet places to go on holiday, places that smell of incense.

Mum sighs. “You were a bouncy little girl, but you went quiet.”


Cycle Of Love

I’ll never forget the day I put your favourite jeans on the wrong wash cycle — the ones you looked so wonderful in on our first date. The latest fad diet was never getting those worn again.

And the time you wanted to shrink into obscurity, when I got horrendous hiccups, as the vicar turned to the congregation and asked ‘that’ question at your sister’s wedding. 

Now I watch you lying in bed; your shrunken version that’s been forced upon us. And I think how beautiful you’d still look in those jeans.

And hate the different reason why they’d fit you.  


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