Each month, I buy a book of twenty stamps. I create twenty post cards. I write twenty short stories about them. I send them to twenty strangers. This is the twenty stamps project.

Request a postcard by sending your snail mail address to sean.arthur.cox@gmail.com or find me on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SeanArthurCox

Monday, April 15, 2013

The Dull Corner



It was a perfectly ordinary corner, nothing exceptional about it at all. There was no carpet, but then, most floors had no carpet. There were stains, but these were ordinary, run of the mill stains and nothing to write home about. The paint was uninspiring, the edgework decent, but not breath-taking. As such, when the photo of this particular corner began to circulate at the Thousand Words Society, a collection of writers who firmly believed that a thousand quality words could be written about any picture, the gathering of authors could not stop talking about it. The picture was bland, lacking any fuel for the imagination. Only the greatest writers could create a thousand compelling words about this image, if anyone could at all.

The conclave gathered in the main hall, and a great table was placed on the stage. Overhead, someone projected the image on a large screen, glowing twenty feet across. The group put it to a vote and selected the ten most worthy, creative writers among them, called them to the stage and gave them sheafs of paper and handfuls of pens and pencils. Nine of them struggled, sweat beading on their brow, more from strain than the bright lights. They wrote and rewrote, scribbled and crumbled, and scribbled again. One, however, wrote with ease, pausing only occasionally to look around. His story seemed to be writing itself. When he finished, he read it aloud for all to hear.

The photo was of the most mundane corner ever beheld,” he began.


- Originally mailed to C. Donnell from Stafford, Texas

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