Three-Minute Fiction

I participated in NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest for February. To be precise, I wrote 600 words in about half an hour just before the deadline. The first I’d heard of it was when Weekend Edition said “last chance!” So I thought, “what the heck? It can’t hurt.”

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with what my mom calls the “butt glue” lately. That is, the thing that gets you to sit down, turn off the TV, close the browser, and just write. I figured I wouldn’t have a shot in Hell of winning against thousands of entries that had more than half an hour to write their entry. But if I even made it as a finalist, that’s some sort of validation. And if I won, and was able to do it by pulling the entry straight out of my head and onto the page, then I must be doing something right, right?

The rules state that the work can’t be published anywhere before the finalist is determined, so I’ll wait to post my entry until the contest is over. It was supposed to be based on this image below…and just as a hint, most people appeared to think of this as a coffee shop, but in my mind’s eye I was seeing a pizzeria.

Whatever happens, it was fun.  :)

Photo by Robb Hill