Chris Armstrong's Blog: CuratedLines, page 5

Short Stories #10

Chris

We are one third of the way through my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry and we come to the tenth story, ‘Three Characters in Need of Their Writers’. The story is about three writers who are working together on a story line meeting up to discuss their work… or is it?

At the tenth of their regular meetings the three writers knew that they had reached an impasse. Their story was going nowhere. Roy and Celia were united, as they so often were these days, and Chris felt that the...

Short Stories #9

Chris

Working further down to the next story in my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the ninth, ‘The Friends’. Several of the stories in the collection revisit three friends who received brief mentions in The Dark Trilogy. The two boys and the girl were in fact friends from my primary-school childhood (although they are renamed in my writing) and in these stories I have created fictional back stories for them. ‘The Friends’ introduces two of them.

We find them at a post...

Short Stories #8

Chris

Working further down the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the eighth story in the collection, ‘The Sailing Board’. One of the ships that I sailed on was the New Zealand Shipping Company cargo vessel, the Haparangi and chance sent me a photo of the wooden sailing board that was positioned at the top of the gangway with information about sailing time and destination. The story that came to mind is pure fiction but the characters were certainly base...

Short Stories #7

Chris

Working on down the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the seventh story in the collection, ‘The Beginning’. A story about a young and rather naïve boy about to leave home for the first time.

Decisions – big decisions – were not something he had needed to worry about until recently and this one had been very big: very big indeed, for it was about his future. His life. Now he was wondering how this decision had ever been reached!

The boy sat ...

Short Stories #6

Chris

Working on down the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the sixth story in the collection, a collection of images or anecdotes,  ‘Totality’. This is a necessarily short introduction to a short exercise in writing. There are still 24 more stories to introduce, but we are moving along quite nicely in this month of short stories!

I saw this little collection within a collection as a series of ‘postcards’ – brief, almost pictorial, images of everyday...

Short Stories #5

Chris

Working through the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, we come to the fifth story in the collection, ‘One Four Five’. There are 25 further stories to introduce, so we are still just beginning this marathon: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… and Covid became central to several of the stories. As this taster will show!

Day 145 to be precise and all the isolation has become too much. Perha...

Short Stories #4

Chris

Working through the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, comes a taster from the third story in the collection, ‘A Time of Plague; A Time of Love’. There are 26 further stories to introduce, so we are still just beginning this marathon: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… to make a change… and found that I liked the genre.

A time of plague – what was I thinking! And now a man and a girl; a ...

Short Stories #3

Chris

Working onward through the contents page of my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, comes a taster from the third story in the collection, ‘The Room’. There are 30 stories in all, so we are still just beginning this marathon: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… to make a change… and found that I liked the genre.

Like the last story, the influence of Covid is all too apparent here! A lone woman is in – possibly...

Short Stories #2

Chris

Following on from yesterday’s introduce to ‘The Den’ in my collection, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, comes a taster from the second story in the collection, ‘Age’. There are 30 stories in all, so we are still just beginning this marathon: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… to make a change… and found that I liked the genre.

I suppose it is one of the inevitable consequences of growing old that you dwell, to some e...

Short Stories #1

Chris

I thought that I would introduce the short stories in When I Am Not Writing Poetry one by one. There are 30 in all, so buckle down for a long haul: a month of short stories! I began writing short stories during the Covid lockdown as a break from poems… to make a change… and found that I liked the genre.

The first short story is about a boy – my grandson – who wakes early on a warm summer night and failing to fall asleep again decides on an adventure. It is a story of the night, of n...