How’s Business is the first epub
Dateline Boulder:
As an experiment, I published the short story, How’s Business? as an EPUB.
I also posted two new two-minute scripts, bringing my weekly postings up to date.
Yours,
James Maxwell
Category Archives: funny flash fiction
Writing Again!
I rewrote the last 200 scripts over the last couple of weeks!
Dateline Boulder:
During my last writing project, 100 Stories in 100 Days, I discovered that I didn’t have enough rewritten scripts available for conversion into funny flash fiction.
It was quite a scramble to keep myself ready to write.
Consequently, I had to rewrite 30 or so two-minute scripts just to complete my project.
Needless to say, I made a mental note to rewrite all the remaining scripts. The problem I discovered was that, as I wrote the flash fiction pieces, I made subtle little changes to my story. All of these changes accumulated and it became necessary to re-fabulate my scripts to bring them up to date.
I have now updated the remaining 260 scripts, eliminating those that seemed too long, were following story lines I’ve since abandoned, or were just too bad to be worth the rewrite effort. I ended up with 237 scripts available for rewrite.
I need 225 stories to complete my 500 stories in the Up the Alley epic.
In the last five days I’ve been busy beginning the final project (or what I hope will be the final writing project). I am now writing five stories a day, meaning I might have less than 45 days until this project is complete.
I also posted three more two-minute scripts and two more funny flash fiction to this website, bringing my samples up to date.
I’m also beginning to learn how to export text into the Kindle sphere. I’m beginning with my Dialogue Jokes and my current plan is to package them into volumes of 800 jokes for sell at $7.99 per volume.
Yours,
James Maxwell
DAY 35: 100 Stories in 100 Days!
Project completed on time, under budget!
Dateline Boulder:
I wrote the last three stories in this writing project today, bringing my 35 day total to 100! I was 65 days ahead of schedule. The average time to write the story fell to 30 minutes each.
Eventually, this exercise will comprise all of volume III of my work in progress, UP THE ALLEY or Tales of the Cafe Milano
There are multiple stories within the master story as well.
The master story deals with the Milano, a seedy coffee shop catering to the homeless. This ongoing series of short stories currently has 250 titles in it. The first of five volumes of these tales is scheduled for publication in January of 2015.
Within the ironic umbrella of UP THE ALLEY are the tales of Beatrice and Ernest, better known as Berta and Ernie. There is also the story of coffee shop regulars, John and James, best friends since childhood, now in their 60′s. John a storyteller and James a joke thief. John is upset with the city’s treatment of the homeless and is just about ready to start a street theatre. There is also the story of Mabel’s Boarding House, where she keeps a few rooms for the homeless when she can. Oh, and a couple of grow closets which she keeps off the books for tax purposes and such. There is also the romantic story of Renew and Reatta, he a bud-tender and she a barista.
There are also new, emerging tales of regulars. I’ve started now to add the four layers of social strata visible at the nearby campus: administration, faculty, students and then, staff, of course. John needs students for this street theatre, so I’m writing these characters in now.
As Jean-Claude Van Itallie once observed, the campus is a rich comic scenario (I’m not doing any research and am probably way off the track with the spelling of his name: my apologies for being so lazy.)
Eventually, I’ll expand on the locals and their Happiest City in America self-congratulatory image. But, both the University and the City of Boulder are still mostly in the background while I refabulize the remaining 200 or so scripts to bring them up to date and to keep the continuing series of stories mentioned above on track.
Here are the last three titles of stories written in my 100 Stories in 100 Days writing exercise:
- 03-01-13 Mistitled
- 03-01-13 I Want a Holiday
- 03-01-13 At Home Today
Oh, I also posted a new sample from this series on the Funny Flash Fiction section of the menu for this website: It’s called Mad Money.
Yours,
James Maxwell
DAY 34: 100 Stories in 100 Days!
I wrote three new stories this morning, bringing my total to 97 in this writing project.
Dateline Boulder:
100 Stories in 100 Days!
I am going to try to wrap this all up tomorrow!
Here are the three titles I wrote this morning:
- 02-28-13 Where Are You
- 02-28-13 Piece of Cake
- 02-28-13 Do It Again
Yours,
James Maxwell
DAY 33: 100 Stories in 100 Days!
I wrote four new stories this morning (94 so far in this writing exercise.)
Dateline Boulder:
Here are the titles I wrote this morning (see the Funny Flash Fiction section on the menu for samples):
- 02-27-13 Off and On
- 02-27-13 In the Burbs
- 02-27-13 Mad Money
- 02-27-13 No Such Thing
Yours,
James Maxwell
Lots of Results (Proud to Say)
Progress Report for 2012
Dateline Boulder:
It’s been a good first year with a blog.
I’ve published lots on it, including a learn to draw project that lasted for a couple of months. I’m hoping to replace that line-intensive approach with something much more simple.
Here are some numerical results for published work:
Graphic Panels and Cartoons:
- Ernie’s Kernels: 28 cartoons
- In the Dark: 129 cartoons
- Penny-a-Joke: 129 joke panels
Jokes:
- Dialogue Jokes: 100 pages of jokes (1209 jokes total)
Plays and Short Stories:
- Funny Flash Fiction: 69 Short Stories
- Two-Minute Scripts: 105 scripts
In addition, I have a fifteen month queue of short stories (about 70) and a 12 month queue of two-minute scripts (about 105).
The bulk of the Flash Fiction and Two-Minute Scripts are cross-platform tales of the homeless set at the Cafe Milano, a seedy coffee shop catering to the homeless.
I’m not planning on publishing more pages of jokes until I start Selling volumes (at a penny a joke, of course.). I have a total of 9300 jokes and most of them have not been published yet.
The jokes, because of their unique dialogue format, are achieving for me an International audience (albeit English-speaking.).
By this time next year, most of my queued work will be exhausted (although I have about three years of scripts available and can write many more very quickly from a virtually unlimited source — my jokes (the source of all 525 written so far – from five days of joke writing out of 75 days total).
Happy New Year – 2013!
Yours,
James Maxwell
New Funny Flash Fiction & Ernie’s Kernel Published Today
Ernie’s Kernel Turning into a Daily
Dateline Boulder:
I published a new Funny Flash Fiction today: Useful.
I also published a new Ernie’s Kernel: Life.
Writing Ernie’s Kernel is producing about 50 one-liners a day. Only about 10 percent of these are useful for Ernie’s one-liners. However, many of the other one-liners are useful for other things I write.
One other observation: Using aphorisms as source material causes much more critical thinking than converting a narrative joke into a dialogue joke.
I’m not used to thinking in this way — I much prefer wild imagination (I like to let my mind have its way with me). However, critical thinking exercises, while painful in some ways, have always led to new creative avenues.
Yours,
James Maxwell
Ernie’s Kernel Introduced Today!
New Internet Panel a Visual Art Within a Narrative Fiction
Dateline Boulder:
The Up the Alley series, written in both dramatic and narrative formats simultaneously, added a visual format today with the introduction of “Ernie’s Kernels.”
Ernie’s Kernels is a panel created by one of the characters in Up the Alley.
It is a form of irony — the play within the play, or in this case, the cartoon within the play (that is also a narrative fiction.).
Sound confusing — that’s the funny part.
Here is the first Ernie’s Kernels:
Yours,
James Maxwell
Aphorisms and Epigrams Begin Today.
Ernie encouraged to write down his thoughts
Dateline Boulder:
Ernie, who along with John must carry most of the weight of Up the Alley, adds aphorisms and epilogues to the poetry, jokes and short stories he now writes (Thanks to the encouragement of John and James, his mentors.)
Ernie refers to all of them as aphorisms, although much of the time he will focus his efforts on something so personal to him that he mistakenly thinks he is writing an aphorism when he is really writing an epigram.
Ernie will begin inserting his aphorisms into his other writing. It is a new kind of ironic metafiction. Since everything I write is for the web eventually, Ernie’s aphorisms will be available by clicking on a link within the story or play someone is reading.
It is the creation of a visual genre within a narrative genre. Not exactly new, but hopefully I’ll be able to find an innovative way to engage an audience.
Here is Ernie’s first few Aphorisms (Or, Epigrams, as the case will often be.). I have not yet attempted to insert them in a story:
And finally, the chosen
official first Ernie Aphorism:
Yours,
James Maxwell
Turning a Two-Minute Script into Fiction
My earlier two-minute script adapted into funny flash fiction
Dateline Boulder
Earlier this morning, I wrote a two-minute script You Got Your Ailments.
A few minutes ago, I adapted the script into a Funny Flash Fiction of less than 500 words.
The script itself was adapted from a dialogue joke I wrote two-and-a-half years ago.
Here is today’s Funny Flash Fiction:
Yours,
James Maxwell