🆆 Micro Monday: Good Ideas
#176 on shy ideas, discarded items, and hungry kittens
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 #176
My good ideas are shy. But if they see that I treat the stupid ideas with respect, they come forward.
Gail Carson Levine
Prompt #176
Write about something you threw away.
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.
Blueprints for Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon
It didn’t help me to date an architect, nor did it make sense to build our home on a faultline. We’re all at fault here—for loving architects, for building things that fall apart if we neglect them. Like homes. Like relationships. Last night I dreamt I let three kittens into my house—they were hungry and a wolf was growling between the evergreens. I didn’t tell them about the possibility of earthquakes, how easy it is to become someone’s dinner. Last night, I dreamt I let my relationship out, watched it walk straight into the wolf’s mouth. I don’t blame the wolf. Like me, it was starving—and of course, needed to be fed. It’s hard to watch something you love get swallowed, but don’t we do the same with our time every day? When the wolf licked its lips, I knew it was digesting my relationship, so I moved the kittens away from the window, gave them pieces of chicken breast, a small bowl of milk, as no living things should have to watch what is wild devour what’s left of a heart.
182 words. Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Pacific Northwest and the author of five full-length collections of poems. Agodon is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and co-host of the poetry series, Poems You Need, with Melissa Studdard. Her book Accidental Devotions was published this month by Copper Canyon Press. Find her at agodon.com and join us this week for her Substack Live, “What You’re Afraid to Say: Prose Poems & Personal Narrative.”
III. This Week on Writer-ish and D3
10-Minute Live Writing Sessions (LWS): May 13, 2026 Weds 3:00 pm PT
Substack Live with Kelli Russell Agodon on “What You’re Afraid to Say: Prose Poems & Personal Narrative”: May 13, 2026 1:00 pm PT
May Paid Subscriber Zoom: May 15, 2026 Fri 1:00-4:00 pm PT. For the first hour I’ll share how I use Scrivener to organize my micro prose, and offer some revision tips for those doing Month of Micro. The next two hours are a quiet working time.
IV. From My Desk
We’re gathering (and sharing) the TOC’s in progress from Month of Micro, and it should be in our gallery by Wednesday. Tracking your micro prose using my TOC template is a great way to see your body of work grow while also activating the belief that your writing—all writing—is purposeful, important, and necessary. Paid subscribers can connect via our subscriber chat this month, too, and I hope you’ll join me on Friday for a quick revision primer and review of how I use Scrivener to organize my work.
Thank you for being here. I’m grateful for the kindness, curiosity, and creativity you bring to our community.
warmly,
Darien
P.S. To see what’s happening on Writer-ish this month including all upcoming Substack Lives, here’s the full calendar.
Loved Kelly's microprose..... So lyrical... Symbolic
Wbh 228 the trash of humanity
I'm a day late with this but I wrote!
A Mother’s Trash (302)
You’re surrounded by boxes, some already labeled and taped shut, others not yet formed. I freeze in the doorway, unsure I want to disturb you. Maybe if I silently walk out, I won’t have to help you. But you’re my mother so of course I’m helping you move. Even if I disapprove. Even if I think you bought a house on an impulsive whim. A state of mania. What’s done is done and besides, this house is no longer yours. It sold within days because it’s a beautiful house with a massive yard that you claim is too big and I agree. But moving to a city even further away from the daughter you claim you want to move closer to doesn’t make any sense. But I say none of these things. “Do you need help?” Your head snaps up and you beckon me so I dutifully approach. “Here. Take these. Whatever you don’t want, I’m throwing away.” She pushes a stack of heavy photo albums toward me. They slide on the hardwood floor before falling in front of me like dominos. I’m shocked. “I thought you loved these old photos.” I flip through the familiar albums. Me at five years old. Dad and me in my knee high socks. My Dorothy Hamill haircut. The three of us in Taiwan in front of Grandma’s front door. My mother’s crooked jaw not yet fixed. Her blonde hair then brown. “You’re throwing away pictures?” What mother does that? Aren’t mothers supposed to be the ones who never throw away pictures? Who berate everyone else for doing this exact thing? “I don’t have room for them.” I take all of them home with me. I can’t bear to think of them lying in a trash can. A dumpster. A landfill. Our little family. Forever forgotten.