I decided to compile a list of 10 of the 50-word stories that I think represent my best work.
When going through all of the stories from Year Two, picking out the best ones for inclusion in Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Two, I kept coming across stories I had forgotten about. I wrote somewhere around 200 stories over the course of the year, so that’s to be expected!
Every now and then, one of these stories would surprise me and make me laugh or smile. It’s a rare thing to get to read something you wrote as if you were seeing it for the first time, so those experiences made my sojourn through the archives a lot of fun.
Among all of the stories I’ve written, there is the expected range of quality. Some are good, some aren’t so great, and a few, I think, are real gems. I installed the star-rating plugin to help those gems rise to the top of the Popular Stories widget in the sidebar, and the Top Stories page, but with over 700 stories on FiftyWordStories.com today (somewhere around 525 of them written by me), there are definitely some gems that will slip through the cracks. I can’t expect every new reader to go digging through the entire archive to find those gems, so I made a list that might help.
Here are the 10 best stories I think I’ve written for FiftyWordStories.com, in reverse order:
10. Showers and Tellers – February 25, 2011
9. The Apple and the Pear – January 6, 2011
8. Don’t Call Me Savior – January 29, 2010
7. Lemon Zest Cookies – February 10, 2011
6. Claim to Fame – October 12, 2009
5. They Taste Like Bitter Grapes – December 4, 2009
4. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Breathing – August 26, 2010
3. Horse-Whale Hoedown – November 12, 2010
2. Lie-Baby – February 8, 2011
1. The Magical Cup and a Terrifying Beast – December 2, 2010
Six of the stories on this list are included in Volume Two, along with 124 others that would probably all make my top 150. Why not order yourself a copy? It’s only $12 + shipping, or $3 for the ebook.
Which of these 10 stories is your favourite? Would you build your own list differently? I’d love to hear your Top 3, Top 5, or Top 10. Leave a comment!