🆆 Micro Monday: As Long as It Is Written
#182 on what is remembered, family recipes, and waiting for others
This is Writer-ish with Darien Gee, where I help you write your most powerful stories in 300 words or less. If you’re new to micro prose and writing with me, check out this post here.
I. This Week’s Practice
Quote #182
As long as it is written, it will be remembered.
Isabel Allende
Prompt #182
Write about a family recipe.
Set the timer for 10 minutes and start writing. When the timer goes off, give the piece a title, count up the words, add it to your TOC, and share it the comments below.
II. This Week’s Micro Prose
This section features micro prose (300 words or less) by me and other writers, including members of our community. Submit your work for consideration here.
When I Am 317 Pounds My Friends Do Not Wait for Me to Catch Up to Them on a Sidewalk by Sarah Carson
I’m not saying who’s to blame for this—me, plodding along at the surest pace I can on bones lost inside the thick of so many other ways to love a body, or them, anxious to get to the theater, other people holding our seats in the dark. One day, when I am 122 pounds lighter, I will ask myself who I have not waited for—strangers mostly—women wrangling children in parking garages, men taking too much time to get their coats from the overhead compartment. I mean, what do we owe each other anyway? To treadmill or not to treadmill? To hope someone else will find us? Say eventually I caught up to them at the crosswalk & the flow of traffic forced us all to lumber at the same stupid slow snail’s pace. Say we made it to the theater at the same time, the previews having not yet begun. Say none of us was speaking to the others in the dark as we buried our various weights in Sour Patch Kids, our friendship ending quietly beneath the light of Shailene Woodley’s bright face, the burning city. Or say it didn’t. Say this went on for years.
197 words. This piece originally appeared in The Cincinnati Review. Sarah Carson’s poetry and other writing have appeared in The Rumpus, The Slowdown, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and The Christian Century, among others. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan (Persea Books, 2022). stuffsarahwrote.com
III. This Week on Writer-ish and D3
June 24, 2026 Weds 11:00 am PT: 10-Minute Live Writing Sessions (LWS): The last one of the month! If you miss a week, you can access past sessions in the library.
Drafts, Deals & Detours: June 24, 2026 Weds 12:00 pm PT: Why You Might Want to Start a Substack Newsletter: Cheaper than therapy, better than a vision board
IV. Where to Submit This Week
Short Reads is open to previously published micro prose and flash submissions:
Smoking Quarterly is open to micro and flash submissions under 1,000 words:
For tips of submitting your micro, this post (Submit-a-palooza replay) and this post (format your micro) and this post (prepare your author bio and cover letter) might help!
V. ICYMI
VI. From My Desk
The last batch of Month of Micro certificates go out today and tomorrow! If you don’t receive yours by Wednesday, please DM me to let me know.
Thank you for being here and for the kindness, curiosity, and creativity you bring to our community. I’m grateful to have connected with you in our little corner of Substack, and I look forward to what comes next.
warmly,
Darien
P.S. To see what’s happening on Writer-ish this month, including all upcoming Substack Lives, here’s the full calendar.
Sights and smells (208)
His eyes were magnified so thick that they could protect a bank teller from a hold up. It's what I remember most as I watched him in the kitchen performing his annual ritual. No fancy gadgets, just a single knife blade. Diminutive in size, but not strength, he used the blade to turn whole walnuts into bite size pieces, creating a dust cloud that was more visible to my sense of smell than sight. Once the nuts were done, piled up like a termite hill, it was on to the apples. The same blade peeled the skin, cored the fruit and left behind a juicy mound of bite size apple pieces. The piles were introduced to each other inside a large metallic bowl. He grabbed two small tins from the cabinet and shook them like dice over the mixture. Then, using the same blade, he swirled everything together. As he did, my eyes chanced focus from thick glass to thick Popeye sized biceps. He covered the bowl and put it into the blindingly yellow refrigerator. The seder started and I knew it would be exactly 24 pages before the bowl would emerge. Dry matzah was transformed, becoming a once a year treat when piled high with Grandpa's charoset..
Family recipe 156