Tag: Fiction

Sunday's Scrips: A Monthly Newsletter

Sunday’s Scrips: December 2025

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Whatcha Up To?:

  • Happiest of Happy Holidays family and friends! I appreciate you so much and I’m so glad you’re here.
  • Join me online this February for writing workshops! (More Below).
  • Join us for Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club December 17, 2025 to discuss The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman! (More Below).

Online Winter Writing Workshops

My local library has been wanting me to do more writing workshops, but it’s hard to schedule, because our library is (thankfully) extremely full of programming already. We’ve agreed an online workshop might work best, especially in the harder month of February when people are starting to get cabin fever. There will be four sessions, all free and all online via Zoom, and anyone can attend. You can register to attend and have Zoom automatically remind you by checking out my Events Page or finding the events on Facebook.

December Timed Writing Prompt Available Now!

Want a chance to have your work featured on my website, social media, Patreon and Substack accounts? Become a supporter and you’ll have access to my monthly timed writing prompt. Send me your unedited, timed writing response for your chance to be featured! Find the November prompt on Patreon or Substack.

Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club

Join us on Zoom December 17, 2025 at 6pm MT to discuss The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman.

Monthly Book Talks!

Love to read but never know what to pick up? Check out my monthly videos for my local Thompson Falls Public Library here. Remember to Subscribe for free so you never miss one. Book talks: like book club, but shorter.

Readings

Did you know I occasionally remember to record readings of my published pieces. You can check out the latest one here. Be sure to Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

Please forward this to those you think may enjoy it. As always, thanks for joining me. I appreciate you’re here.

NOTE: You can email me directly at sunday (at) sundaydutro (dot) com

Sunday's Scrips: A Monthly Newsletter

Sunday’s Scrips: October 2025

sundaydutroLeave a comment

Whatcha Up To?:

  • This weekend is the Authors of the Flathead Writing Conference! (More Below).
  • Free online writing workshops coming this winter! (More Below).
  • Join us for Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club October 15, 2025 to discuss The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (More Below).

Authors of the Flathead Writing Conference

The first writer’s conference I ever attended, The Authors of the Flathead hold a special place in my heart. Their conference was where I was first introduced to Chris La Tray, and I couldn’t be more grateful. This weekend, I’ll be learning from authors like Shelley Read, Debbie Burke, and Robert Petrone. You don’t need a degree or a published book to attend, and I’d love to see you there!

Online Winter Writing Workshops

My local library has been wanting me to do more writing workshops, but it’s hard to schedule, because our library is (thankfully) extremely full of programming already. We’ve agreed an online workshop might work best, especially in the harder month of February when people are starting to get cabin fever. There will be four sessions, all free and all online via Zoom, and anyone can attend. You can register to attend and have Zoom automatically remind you by checking out my Events Page or finding the events on Facebook.

October Timed Writing Prompt Available Now!

Want a chance to have your work featured on my website, social media, Patreon and Substack accounts? Become a supporter and you’ll have access to my monthly timed writing prompt. Send me your unedited, timed writing response for your chance to be featured! Find the September prompt on Patreon or Substack.

Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club

Join us on Zoom October 15, 2025 at 6pm MT to discuss The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Monthly Book Talks!

Love to read but never know what to pick up? Check out my monthly videos for my local Thompson Falls Public Library here. Remember to Subscribe for free so you never miss one. Book talks: like book club, but shorter.

Readings

Did you know I occasionally remember to record readings of my published pieces. You can check out the latest one here. Be sure to Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

Please forward this to those you think may enjoy it. As always, thanks for joining me. I appreciate you’re here.

NOTE: You can email me directly at sunday (at) sundaydutro (dot) com

Sunday's Scrips: A Monthly Newsletter

Sunday’s Scrips: August 2025

sundaydutroLeave a comment

Whatcha Up To?:

  • A writing retreat in Homer, Alaska? Yes, please! (More Below).
  • Join us for Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club August 20, 2025 to discuss Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (More Below).

Storyknife Writer’s Retreat

Storyknife is a woman’s writing retreat in Homer, Alaska where they feed you and leave you alone to write. It sounds like The Salty Quill which I thoroughly enjoyed in Maine (I was unbelievably productive at that retreat). Before I’d done too much research, I applied. Only afterwards did I find out how distinguished it is. So, while I’m not holding my breath, there’s always a possibility. Applications for Storyknife are open through August 31, 2025 if you’d also like to apply. Please do! Who knows, maybe we’ll end up there together!

August Timed Writing Prompt Available Now!

Want a chance to have your work featured on my website, social media, Patreon and Substack accounts? Become a supporter and you’ll have access to my monthly timed writing prompt. Send me your unedited, timed writing response for your chance to be featured! Find the August prompt on Patreon or Substack.

Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club

Join us on Zoom August 20, 2025 at 6pm MT to discuss Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.

Monthly Book Talks!

Love to read but never know what to pick up? Check out my monthly videos for my local Thompson Falls Public Library here. Remember to Subscribe for free so you never miss one. Book talks: like book club, but shorter.

Readings

Did you know I occasionally remember to record readings of my published pieces. You can check out the latest one here. Be sure to Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

Please forward this to those you think may enjoy it. As always, thanks for joining me. I appreciate you’re here.

NOTE: You can email me directly at sunday (at) sundaydutro (dot) com

Sunday's Scrips: A Monthly Newsletter

Sunday’s Scrips: March 2025

sundaydutroLeave a comment

Whatcha Up To?:

  • I won something in the Storm Cellar Flash Contest! (More Below).
  • Did you know I was once a woman of the night? (More Below).
  • Join us for Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club 03/19/25 to discuss The Seed Keeper.

I WON!

What did I win? I don’t know! When will I find out? Search me! But the point is, I won! Woo hoo! Storm Cellar touts itself as the “literary journal of safety and danger;” I love that. Their flash contest was about “great and unexpected power.” I submitted three pieces, and have no idea which is a winner or of what, but damn, it feels good to be a flash star LOL Find out more about the contest here.

Woman of the Night

Do you read HerStry? I heart them, and they’ll be publishing a flash essay of mine in April that’s all about being a floozie (Julian Melodrama rocks!).

March Timed Writing Prompt Available Now!

Want a chance to have your work featured on my website, social media, and Patreon accounts? Become a supporter and you’ll have access to my monthly timed writing prompt. Send me your unedited, timed writing response for your chance to be featured! Find the March prompt here.

Flashlights & Firelight Online Book Club

Join us on Zoom March 19, 2025 at 6pm MT to discuss The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

Monthly Book Talks!

Love to read but never know what to pick up? Check out my monthly videos for my local Thompson Falls Public Library here. Remember to Subscribe for free so you never miss one. Book talks: like book club, but shorter.

Readings

Did you know I occasionally remember to record readings of my published pieces. You can check out the latest one here. Be sure to Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

Please forward this to those you think may enjoy it. As always, thanks for joining me. I appreciate you’re here.

5 Minute Stretch

5 Minute Stretch

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“pretending seems organic to you”

When she decided to start over, it was with a total and complete blank slate, or so she thought. She took nothing with her but her car, a new phone and number, which she gave no one. She essentially disappeared, changed her name, “started fresh.” And she thought she did it well.

She’d sold everything to have money to start over with, and she’d decided that rather than select a place to go specifically she would simply drive until she decided to stop. She let her music app choose her songs for her, discovering artists she never would have heard of otherwise. And she loved it.

She paid attention to signs telling her how much further til the next gas station, but otherwise ignored everything, even her speed thanks to her car’s speed control. She watched trees fly by, deserts, mountains and lakes. Building, buildings, buildings. Stretches of nothing but corn or wheat. She slept at rest stops, woken every few hours by a big rig pulling in or a cop telling her to move on.

“Why call it a rest stop if you’re not gonna let me rest?” She screamed at one officer, then ducked her head, ashamed and apologizing.

She was becoming someone new, pretending; the pretending becoming organic, natural, so that she no longer knew who she was trying to leave behind. Or why.

5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from Blow Your House Down, by Gina Frangello.

5 Minute Stretch

5 Minute Stretch

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“if you proceed, you will change things”

The choice is simple, she imagines, I go forward or I don’t. I take the risk or I stay safe.

The fortune from her uneaten cookie leers up at her mockingly: If you proceed, you will change things.”

No shit, she thinks to herself before sighing.

What’s the worst that can happen, she wonders. If I go forward with this plan, if I take the risk, I could fail. And that will be a little embarrassing, sure but is that it? I’ll lose a little money, too…roughly a couple hundred bucks…which I can’t exactly afford right now. Still….

She rubs her hands across her eyes, her forehead, back around to her neck. Taking a deep breath she contemplates when happens if she doesn’t move forward: she’ll always be stuck in a job she hates…even if she changes jobs. There’s no such thing as a job she would love. She knows this, she’s tried tons of them, has friends in jobs she’d never considered or even heard of in some instances. She knows she’d hate their jobs too.

That’s the thing that gets her moving, not the possibility of failure, but the fear of never having tried to create something other than what she already knows is waiting for her. She’s a coward.

And yet, everyone calls her brave. She tells people what she’s doing, more out of nervousness than pride; and every last one of them tells her how brave she is. She laughs, if they only knew…

5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard.

5 Minute Stretch

5 Minute Stretch

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“a skylight over my bed”

It’s something I’ve always wanted, something my brother had growing up: a skylight over my bed. In my brother’s case, we called his room The Moon Room, because he could see the moon through his skylight. I don’t remember it myself, only hearing about it all my life, a sort of memory for me through the stories of others such that it becomes hard to untangle the truth from the fiction.

At any rate, I’ve always wanted a skylight over my bed, a way to see the stars at night, the moon. Only I don’t want a little skylight, the common skylight seen at massive warehouse DIY stores where the employees wear blue or orange and don’t have any better idea how to do things that I do, but are trained to listen for key words and then direct you down an aisle.

What I want is custom. What I want is a room of glass, a room where everywhere you look you see the outside, so much so that the outside comes in, so much so that I’ll regret it in summer and in winter, the punishment of letting Nature into such close proximity.

Someday, maybe.

Until then, I go outside for my fix of stars. The white swath of The Milky Way Galaxy which I can both see and recognize that we’re somehow a part of. A conundrum, like memories and stories. Like a skylight that was never mine, that I don’t remember but have always wanted.

5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from Waltzing the Cat, by Pam Houston.

5 Minute Stretch

5 Minute Stretch

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“a fine line between precision and self-indulgence”

“There’s a fine line between precision and self-indulgence,” she says, looking smugly at me.

If only she knew she was right, that line has been made all the finer by her self-indulgent communications. Speaking to me but really speaking to herself, the same way she makes love, creates a sandwich, answers the phone…as though everything is really about her, especially when it is.

She calls her movements, her communication, her fucking “precise.” And I suppose it is. She has an expectation, she has a need, a desire, and this force that is her self must be satisfied. Still…while it’s dizzying at first, sucking you in, gracing you with it’s ethereal existence, time makes it grating, jarring, fucking annoying.

I could say “shut up,” but I don’t. I could simply walk out, walk away, move on with my life free from her pull…but I don’t. I can’t. Not really. But I can only put up with so much of this….

5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg.

5 Minute Stretch

5 Minute Stretch

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“you go back and begin again”

There was nothing for it. She’d given it her best shot, done all the things, tried all the pleas, and nothing was changing. Nothing was getting better. There was nothing for it then but to go back and begin again. Only not with this person, not in this situation, not in this life.

She would go back to the last time she remembered being happy, being confident, being free. She would sell off everything and return to Europe. To the train and the sights and sounds of new realities with every waking. Perhaps this time she wouldn’t get violently ill between Turkey and Romania. Perhaps this time she wouldn’t get stuck in the hostel of the masseuse who thought all white women were from Australia. Perhaps this time she would respond to one of the “Aussie Girl! Hey, Aussie Girl!” taunts with a direct “Feck off!” instead of picking up her pace, averting her eyes, scuttling like a crab.

It wouldn’t take long to regain her long stride despite her short legs, to regain her erect posture despite the weight of the backpack she carried, to regain her confidence, her assurance, her truth. It wouldn’t take long before she’d begin again, back in that place where solitude felt like company.

5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from Letters to a Young Writer, a speech by Colum McCann.