Years ago as I was writing poetry, I kept having ideas for stories and ignoring them. I even gave one idea away to a fiction-writer friend, who wrote it (adding her own twists of course) and sold it to Redbook magazine for $1,000. I was happy for her but felt as though I had given away a dream, so I started paying more attention to my story ideas.  

 

     Dorothea Brande, in a  wonderful old book called On Becoming a Writer, describes a writing method that seems more appropriate for writing fiction than poetry, so I decided to try it with a short story. After weeks of the kind of preparation she outlines in her book, I sat down and wrote that story in one four-hour session, and it was full of surprises for me.  The biggest surprise was when I sent the story, “My Old Girl,” to a magazine competition, and it won the $1,000 grand prize!  

 

   Now I write both poetry and fiction. My stories have appeared in Negative Capability,Cricket and Spider magazines, and in The Honolulu Advertiser. You can read some of them here: