Mental Purgatory

This idea is reminiscent of Marley and Me, or at least, what I perceive the book version of Marley and Me to be like. The idea is to write a story as newspaper pieces each day for a year. In Marley and Me, the news reporter writes a piece each day, largely about his dog.

The topic for the story can be anything, though the one I’d been playing with was the idea of settling in a new community. Each day would include an anecdote about something I’d done that day in settling into the community, or something I noticed about the community.

This story concept produces some cool opportunities for a piece as it has you revealing more and more about your narrator with each day’s brief glimpse. I say brief, because we’re talking a newspaper clipping, so each chapter would be 400-700 words. These restrictions would help change the direction of the story and make it an interesting format to explore.