Micro Fiction: Less than 99 Words

I’m not sure what will become of this section.

For example, I once thought that memes were just dressed up smart remarks and to a degree, I still do. but my kids tell me that they are a language unto themselves. Fine. So I have a new language to learn if I want (or chose?) to keep up with this younger culture who love to capture whole thoughts in what they call memes that seem to own the category of anything less than, say 45 words, often superimposed over some popular photo where whatever had been said is now repurposed to something the writer wants to say. In this sense, memes appear to be a fun version of literary drive-by mockery.

However, the more I learn, the more I’m convinced that these are not a language, for clearly memes use existing languages but exist only in the context of a few social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, thus anything I produce but collect only within the confines of this blog may not be considered by some as real memes.

There are other, can I get away with saying, more legitimate writings . . . that tell a story or describe or proclaim something a bit bigger than one thought or smart remark and don’t depend on being superimposed over a photo.

Let’s see where this experiment leads but I may find that I have to rename this section: “Smart Remarks”.

I have found that there is a very specialized and popular story size of exactly 99 words. These 99 word gems are captured in the next section.