12+   In September 2024, Danielle Baldock (@WritingDani) from the #WritingCommunity on Twitter/X ran her third #30Words30Days microfiction challenge for the year. She posted daily prompt words and invited writers to share our 30-word stories. As with the earlier challenges, it was fun and addictive!

In addition to April and June 2024, Danielle co-ran #30Words30Days with Sumitra Singam (@pleomorphic2 on Twitter/X) in April 2023. I've shared the 30-word stories with insight into my writing process for these in three Tall And True blog posts for the challenge months: April 2023, April 2024 and June 2024.

Danielle and Sumitra's #30Words30Days in 2023 inspired me to publish a Tall And True Microfiction anthology in November 2023, which included a chapter with my April 30-word stories.  

September 2024's 30-Word Stories

As with previous #30Words30Days challenges, I wrote "standalone" pieces for my daily 30-word posts instead of attempting interconnected stories. However, I played with genres, my protagonists' gender and ages, and story topics.

I've listed the September stories in date order below. Danielle's daily prompts are in italics and linked to my posts and any comments on Twitter/X.

Please note: I edited one or two stories after posting them, tagging them on Twitter/X as EDIT because, as I observed in my June 2024 blog post, even 30-word stories need a good edit!

1. I gave you life and cared for and watched you grow until I drove you away. I wish you'd come home and hold my gnarled hand one last time. 

2. I'm dreaming, but let me enjoy it. My manuscript sits on the table, and my agent is negotiating. The publishers present a contract, and I sign it with a flourish. 

3. "Click, click, click." Young Tilly thought this was the sound the dwindling stars in the Milky Way made as street lights and pollution extinguished them from her night sky. "Click." 

4. "You've retired, take a cruise, it'll broaden your horizons," they said. But after two weeks aboard with nothing to do but eat and drink, all that's broadened is my waistline! 

5. He'd given up reading newspapers and watching TV news and instead delivered his own daily reports: "Today was a good day and tomorrow has the potential to be one, too." 

6. I swam beyond the breakers and floated on my back, eyes closed, rising and falling on the swell. The war continued on the frontline. But I savoured a moment's peace. 

7. Zeebok Tundlebar tutted at the stats on his console. Earth had had 4.6 billion years to evolve intelligent lifeforms and had failed. It was time to reset and try elsewhere.

8. She stood at the front of Parliament with her homemade sign: Speaking Truth to Power. The seasons came and went, and the years rolled by, but she did not wilt.

9. Looking at the fatty chops and overboiled veggies on the motel restaurant dinner plate brings back boyhood memories of living with my grandparents. "Brussels sprouts, your favourite, dear." "Thanks, Nan."

10. Voted by his peers at the exclusive grammar school as the old boy most likely to succeed, Monty's political career fizzled after he sided with the Greens on climate change.

11. My pulse quickened when the young woman walked by me, and the wind caught and lifted her dress. Once upon a time, I'd have wolf-whistled, but instead, I looked away.

12. His first guitar songbook was Neil Young's Harvest. "Old man, look at my life; I'm a lot like you were."  Now he's the old man and can't form the chords. 

13. Zing and Zap's flying saucer orbited the barren planet. "Why didn't global warming galvanise them into action?" Zing asked. It seems they were too busy posting cat videos," Zap replied.

14. "I'm sorry, Phoebe. I stuffed up. It won't happen again. Please give me one more chance. I love you." Phoebe crumpled Paul's letter and binned it, vowing to move on. 

15. I'm breathless with excitement at the travel options I've researched, and he's looking at his phone, scrolling social media posts. "Sounds good, Darl, but," he says, popping my balloon again!

16. "Go forth and thrive," the Principal urged us, closing his valedictory speech. "Can we go first, Sir?" Thommo called out, earning a final detention. Unsurprisingly, he's now a famous comedian. 

17. "Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam." Tommy wanted to ask how people gathered before mobile phones, map apps and GPS but realised his granddad was lost in the song. 

18. "Become more than the sum of your parts." It's the usual Sunday service. Mum's transfixed, Dad's dozed off, and I'm praying Father McKenzie won't be coming to grope my parts. 

19. They were young and passionate, making out in his car, behind the dunes, and in her bedroom, quiet so her folks wouldn't hear them. But with years, the passion waned. 

20. Okay, so he told us not to eat the fruit in the garden. But watching those apples ripen red, I thought, what the heck, why be so bossy about them?

21. I'm bored with my life and feel I'm weathering on the vine. Or is it withering? I don't recall the difference. I could google it, but I can't be bothered. 

22. Bernice opened a bookshop in a small town and joined the local progress association. She quit after two meetings: a tree change was one thing; her world views were another.

23. I sat in a darkened corner at the test screening, listening to the audience laugh. "It's another flop," I heard someone say. "IT'S A SERIOUS DRAMA!" I wanted to spit. 

24. The third-gen Martians did not welcome the space liners overflowing with Earthlings fleeing the dying homeworld. Instead, they redirected the refugees to detention facilities on the inhospitable parts of Mars.

25. Dad nicknamed me Buddy as a kid. It was "Buddy this" and "Buddy that" until the twenty-something me exploded and demanded he use my real name. "Okay, Bud," Dad replied.

26. "I think I'm developing feelings for you," he whispered in her ear. She was glad he couldn't see her face grimacing in the dark. No more poets, she swore silently.

27. They warn you about sleepless nights, the terrible twos, childhood tantrums, and teenage attitude and pushback, but not the anxiety of watching your sleeping newborn's chest, willing it to expand. 

28. The final siren sounds. Joy abounds for my team and fans while the losers are devastated. "There's always next season," I want to console them, but I'm cheering too hard. 

29. Cleaning the attic, I find her last letter inside the book we read to each other as twenty-something lovers. Our lives unfolded differently, and I should bin both but don't. 

30. I slip off my shoes and socks, walk across the sand to the shoreline and plant my feet in the sea. It's sunset here but sunrise somewhere in the world. 

My feet planted in the sea at Mindil Beach, Darwin, in 2019 (click for larger image)

Playing with Genres, Protagonists and Subjects

As mentioned, each day's #30words30days post was a "standalone" story. But I played with and mixed up genres and topics. I wrote twenty stories on Family, Ageing, Life and Politics; five on Romance and Relationships; and five on Climate Change, three of which used Sci-Fi to deliver my call-to-action message. 

For my protagonists, eleven were male, seven were female, and twelve were "not specified" (and could be male, female or non-binary). 

Similarly, in terms of the ages of my protagonists, five were "not specified" (though likely to be adults), three were children, nine were young adults (twenty and thirty-somethings), five were middle-aged (forties and fifties), and eight were older adults (sixties-plus). 

Respecting my place as an older white male writer, I didn't craft any of my stories in the voices of people of colour or other ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

Life Imitates Art

I enjoyed writing my daily 30-word stories, and I'm proud of them. However, there is one story I regret posting on the morning of 28 September for the Abound prompt:

The final siren sounds. Joy abounds for my team and fans while the losers are devastated. "There's always next season," I want to console them, but I'm cheering too hard.

Oscar Wilde said, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." That afternoon, my Aussie Rules footy team, the Sydney Swans, lost the AFL Grand Final for the second time in two years by a whopping margin, and I was one of our devastated fans who didn't want to hear any consoling platitudes about "next season"!

#30Words30Days November?

With one more 30-day month left in the year, will Danielle run a fourth #30Words30Days challenge in November? I don't know.

It might be too much of a clash for novel writers with November's annual NaNoWriMo. But it could also be the perfect creative kick-starter for the writing day, like a cup of coffee!

Perhaps I should write a 30-word story about it and see if Wilde's quote about Life imitating Art comes true again. In a joyful way for me this time!

© 2024 Robert Fairhead

Thanks to Markus Winkler for the September image from Pixabay.com.

N.B. You might enjoy listening to the Tall And True Microfiction Anthology episode on the Tall And True Short Reads storytelling podcast.