Notes on “To His Coy Mistress” and “Suo”

For several years now, NPR’s All Things Considered has been running a short, short story contest called Three-Minute Fiction. The idea is simple: people send in stories that can be read over the radio within three minutes – that is, stories of 600 words or less – and an author-judge selects from among the entrées what he or she considers the best of the lot. To make things even more interesting, the judge will toss in a challenge: stories must include certain words, for example, or start and end with specific lines. The contest has generated a lot of enthusiasm, with thousands of submissions each competition round, from professional and aspiring writers alike. After all, anyone can tell a story of a few hundred words – and at that length, a novice or amateur has a chance of coming up with a gem of a tale as well as the most polished of writers. So, therefore, many try.

A regular NPR listener, I had been aware of the contest and listened to some of the winners read aloud on the program. (There are small prizes awarded – signed copies of the author-judges’ books, usually – but the real reward is the exposure your story gets from being read on air and posted on the NPR website). But the thought of joining the game myself never crossed my mind – at least, not until I was driving around the Haight in San Francisco one evening earlier this year in January, heard on the radio that another round of the contest was coming up, and was suddenly determined to submit something of my own. What gave rise to my resolve at that particular point in time is a tale in itself – one that would take considerably more than 600 words – and maybe someday I’ll tell it, when I’m feeling a little more rash and a lot more self-revealing.

In any event, that particular round required a story (of 600 words or less, of course) that had one character making a joke and one character weeping. What came up for me was the first story in this blog, “To His Coy Mistress.” I’m quite fond and proud of it, since, well, I wrote it. Also, it’s the first piece of creative writing I had done in a long, long time that was longer than a haiku or short verse, so its service as an icebreaker endears it to me all the more.

Many months later, the next round came up, and the challenge this time was to have a character come to town (or village, city, whatever) and another one leave. “Suo” was my first response to that challenge, one that I did not submit since it’s pretty bleak (among other reasons), and yet one I also hold in much affection (see reason stated in previous paragraph). I came up with another story that I did submit, which I will post at a later time.

Anyway, that’s how these first two stories came about.