My short story ‘One in a Thousand’ received Third Place in Issue #32 for On the Premises. Their prompt was: We challenged contestants to write a creative, compelling, well-crafted story between 1,000 and 5,000 words long in which a character (not necessarily the main character, but one important to the story) almost dies.
In the end they received 377 contest entries and chose six stories for prizes.
This piece was originally planned to be my creative submission for a literacy unit: Reading, Writing & Criticism, but was born out of a lecture prompt: write about a near-miss event (something that could’ve been much worse). Pay attention to sensory detail.
During the lecture I decided to write about an experience where I almost had a biking accident in wet weather. I decided to approach the first part of the exercise from a realistic perspective; simply writing what happened from a first person perspective in present tense. I decided on present tense for its feeling of urgency/immediacy, as this was my memory of the near-accident. The next part of the exercise was to change the perspective. For this I decided to write from the perspective of an imaginary onlooker, and decided to also keep this in first person; something I had never attempted before (writing two, first person perspectives in a single narrative). I later decided to complete the piece by experimenting with these multiple angles in a fragmented edit. The end version isn’t 100% linear, as I wanted the reader to experience the near-miss drama (and perhaps doom) from the onlookers perspective, thereby creating more suspense with this back and forth exchange. I have attempted to separate the perspectives by using a back-slash for the onlooker and a forward-slash for the main protagonist.
– Jakob
This is another literature assignment for a unit appropriately called ‘Writing Creative Non-fiction.’ We were required to write a 1500 word immersion essay—something I had never attempted before, but I grabbed my friend Tom and we headed out into the city for a ‘night on the town’ and there I was confronted with both my agoraphobia and my lost youth. It’s not one of my best pieces but it’s well worth a read – if not for mere entertainment, as there are a few memorable characters we came across.
and reflections of my late father This weekend marks the 4-year anniversary of my father’s death. Dad died in July 2014
Here’s an antidote I contributed to a hitrecord project.
This article has been my most popular piece written for Medium thus far. I suppose it has touched people because of its overall theme: mysteries are bigger than us. I do believe people want to feel more connected to the universe. ‘Our’ world and the societies we have built, are becoming faster, more stressful and we seem to be losing our ability to truly connect with each other in a meaningful way. Perhaps we should stop glaring down into our screens and cast our eyes up into the night sky. Who knows what we’ll discover.
And why our healthcare system isn’t helping We had a deal. Had created a system for when she was feeling ‘under the weather.’ In fact, it was a code for when she felt suicidal, a simple text message that used a hurricane category scale system. If Grace was feeling blue but it wasn’t too serious, it was a Category 1. Winds were picking up and there might be some falling debris, but usually some music or a silly movie could calm things down. If it was a Category 2 or 3, I’d start to worry. Sometimes she’d text: Category 2 … I think, maybe worse. Definitely strong. And I’d wait to hear back, hoping her foundations wouldn’t be ripped from the earth, all the while knowing she was in a dangerous sway towards a free-fall. Often a hot chocolate and a long chat would do the trick, and I would feel a swell of relief that she was stable, calm and safe.
