No More FGTs

Erin Morgenstern’s final Flax-Golden Tale was posted today, five years almost to the day from when she posted her first one. She says she started them when her blog was “newish and I wanted to show I was a proper writer who wrote things.”

She also wanted to do something inspired by the Mysteries of Harold Burdick—I had no idea what the Mysteries of Harold Burdick are, so I clicked on the link in her post and found myself at Chris Van Allsburg’s website. I don’t know who he is, either (I reckon he’s a writer, there are so darned many of us, mostly unknown to each other), but the history of the Mysteries is there, and wow, is it a creepy/cool story.

Read it here. Me paraphrasing would do it no justice anyway. The point of this piece is that, after July 11, there will be no more FGTs at erinmorgenstern.com.

Rats.

Her weekly ten-sentence stories have been a staple in my routine since I first read The Night Circus. Just as she was inspired by the Harold Burdick story, so have I been inspired by her Flax-Golden Tales. They are primarily why I decided to do my writing exercises, those odd little pieces attached to a photograph and often left dangling for the reader to finish in his/her imagination. I haven’t set myself the same parameters, though I try to draft something wonderful in twenty minutes or less. Some hit, some miss, all are me stretching my skill and imagination beyond my comfort level. Almost all of my writing is inspired by pictures, other writers’ works, music, lyrics, poetry, movies—if someone else has produced it, I can springboard from it. I can even do some things better, though at present I am no longer sure (if I ever was) what my preference really is. Is it personal non-fiction? Fantasy? Urban fantasy? Short fiction? Serial work? The never-ending novel? I know what I like to write, but I don’t want to be locked into a genre, either.

I am just a writer who wants to write things.