In April, June and September 2024, Danielle Baldock (@WritingDani) ran a #30Words30Days microfiction challenge on Twitter/X, posting daily prompts and inviting the #WritingCommunity to share our 30-word creations. Despite NaNoWriMo in November, I hoped Dani would run a fourth challenge. And she did!

As with previous #30Words30Days challenges, my 30-word stories were typically creative writing kick-starts, a blank slate with a morning cuppa. All were standalone pieces because I’m not as organised as other writers who crafted interconnected stories.

I made fewer post-posting edits this month. But I couldn’t decide between two stories for 30 November’s prompt word, Nature, so I posted both versions.

November 2024’s 30-Word Stories

I’ve listed my November stories in date order, with Dani’s italicised daily prompts linked to my posts on Twitter/X. There’s also a link to my Tall And True Microfiction Anthology with April 2023’s #30Words30Days stories:

1. My books, CDs, and a framed photo of the two of us are on the verge with my suitcase of clothes. What cuts me the most is our rubber plant. 

2. I’d never considered how you could fit a human life and all our highs and lows, loves and losses into a shoebox until it was time to scatter your ashes. 

3. We called our elderly neighbours “Dorrie” and “Herb” from TV’s Number 96. She was a stickybeak, and he was henpecked. But the neighbour this teenage boy fantasised over was “Abigail”. 

4. We gathered on the factory floor as the last EV rolled off the assembly line. Who’d have thought governments would mandate a return to combustible engines and coal-fired power stations? 

5. Other ducks nicknamed him Daffy for falling in love with the decoy left on the pond after the hunting season. But he adored her unruffled plumage and their companionable silence. 

6. “Drop me a line when you’re in town. We’ll get together,” I texted. I heard nothing from my daughter, but looking at her social media posts, she visited her mum. 

7. I found a seed, planted and watered it, and watched its green-leafed seedling emerge and grow into a strange, twisted plant. I never dreamed it would spread and strangle us. 

8. Mum reminisces how her father was often absent from the family home. “He said he was a spy, a mole, stealing secrets. But he had secret second family,” she sighs. 

9. “It’s the twenty-first century,” he protested when I caught him in bed with the girl from next door. “We can be free agents.” Should I tell him about the conference? 

10. When they moved in together, he gave her a plant, a perennial he hoped would live and flower forever, like their love. But it proved to be a short-lived annual. 

11. We called the undeveloped land at the back of Nanna’s house, where we roamed and played as kids, The Bush. It seemed vast. But now it’s just four boxy houses. 

12. The media labelled him a mad scientist, colleagues wouldn’t return his calls, and his wife left him. But he still worked alone in his laboratory, seeking the cure for humanity. 

13. “Ya canna ‘ave puddin’ if’n ya dunna eat ya vegetables.” Tommy struggled when Grandpa visited. He couldn’t understand Grandpa’s broad northern-English brogue, nor why he didn’t realise tomatoes weren’t vegetables! 

14. “So my plot is a billionaire TV star becomes the leader of the world’s most powerful country and …” I glaze over. I’d hoped for a fiction pitch, not a fantasy! 

15. Hearing Billie Holiday sing Strange Fruit for the first time was a chill-up-the-spine moment. I didn’t understand the lyrics, but later, when I googled them, the chill turned to ice. 

16. I had my first kiss behind the old mill. We were ten. We puckered up and let our lips meet. There were no tongues or passion. It was an experiment. 

17. Don’t snoop on your neighbours. It’s the first rule of apartment living. But I’m addicted to the frisson of sitting in a darkened living room with my night vision binoculars. 

18. I’m always muddling up metaphors, proverbs and sayings. For example, instead of writing, “You reap what you sow“, I’ll come up with, “You rip what you sew” — muddled and back-to-front! 

19. “Don’t stand so close to me!” Sting enters my head when the young woman stands next to me on the train. I counter him with Nirvana’s, “My will is good.” 

20. The new teacher told us to raise our hands and not call out answers. I’ve had my hand up all day, but she hasn’t picked me. Perhaps I’m invisible? Yippee! 

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21. Scientists say the universe and, consequently, the galaxies, solar systems, planets, earth and all life started with the Big Bang. But what came before the bang? A spark, of course.

22. My brother Dave delivers his drunk punchline, “A koala eats, roots and leaves!” Teenage nephews snigger, but I’m proud when my daughter counters, “Koalas only eat eucalypt leaves, Uncle Dave.”

23. I’ve learned to conceal my emotions. To sit alone and drown them with drink and silence. It wasn’t always like this. I had a family. I loved and was loved.

24. The tree stood in front of a vacant block. It had thick, leafy, easy-to-climb branches and was Matty’s special place. One day, he found a sign tied to its trunk.

25. I hadn’t seen Johnny since our house-sharing twenties, and the intervening years had been harder on him than me. “Hey, man, do you still smoke grass?” he asked. “No, sorry.”

26. He held out long after family and friends succumbed to do-it-for-your-country advertising. But the lure of a tax deduction had him rolling up his sleeve to embed the Nation Chip.

27. I helped my son with a school project to create a family tree dating to his great-grandparents. Tracing all the branches leading to him underscored the miracle of his existence.

28. The fridge is overflowing with this year’s bumper harvest of tomatoes. My wife is so proud of her balcony garden. So, how do I tell her I’ve gone off tomatoes?

29. I take dried flowers to the aged care home for Mum. “Blossom,” she croaks, and I wonder if she means the flowers or her nickname for me as a child.

30. (1) I’m an editor, but it’s not in my nature to be unkind. So, how do I tell him his writing stinks? I sigh and push on through the stilted prose.

30. (2) He promised to make decisions on their behalf and to turn around their lives, and they trusted him. No one stopped to consider the corrupting nature of wealth and power.

Insight into #30Words30Days November

Of the thirty-one stories (two for 30 November), eighteen are pure imagination, and thirteen draw on elements of autofiction or real life (like the second story for the 30th). I’ll let the reader decide which is which and the real-life references, but here are three insights:

1) I doubled up on the story for the 11th’s prompt word, Bush:

We called the undeveloped land at the back of Nanna’s house, where we roamed and played as kids, The Bush. It seemed vast. But now it’s just four boxy houses.

… with a story I wrote for 2 April’s challenge prompt, Wild:

We called it the “bush”, a wild block behind our house where my brother and I played. One day, bulldozers and builders arrived and replaced it with a boxy house.

2) I tapped into my memories of The Bush for a short story I’ve shared on Tall And True, The Special Tree, admitting in the story insight:

I drew on my experience as a boy for my protagonist and plot. A tract of undeveloped land surrounded my boyhood home. We called it the “bush”, and within it stood tall trees that I loved climbing. But one day, bulldozers rolled in and cleared the trees, and builders followed. The bush that had seemed so vast to me as a boy became a row of boxy suburban houses. 

I condensed my boyhood bush into a vacant block with a favourite climbing tree out the front. My young primary school-aged protagonist, Matty, finds a sign on the tree and asks his big sister to help him read it.

I also borrowed from The Special Tree for the 24th’s prompt, Place:

The tree stood in front of a vacant block. It had thick, leafy, easy-to-climb branches and was Matty’s special place. One day, he found a sign tied to its trunk.

So obviously, The Bush meant a lot to me as a kid!

3) Finally, I acknowledge the influence of one of my favourite bands, Pink Floyd, in the 13th’s story for the prompt, Vegetable:

“Ya canna ‘ave puddin’ if’n ya dunna eat ya vegetables.” Tommy struggled when Grandpa visited. He couldn’t understand Grandpa’s broad northern-English brogue, nor why he didn’t realise tomatoes weren’t vegetables!

Share Your Writing on Tall And True

Thanks, Dani!

As with the previous #30Words30Days challenges, posting a 30-word story in November became part of my routine, like walking my dog, fetching a coffee, and nutting out Wordle before I start writing.

I am a creature of habit, and I miss Dani’s prompts. But hopefully, #30Words30Days will return in April 2025, if not on Twitter/X, then on another social media platform.

In the meantime, thanks, Dani. I’ve enjoyed your daily prompts and writing and sharing my 30-word stories in April, June, September and November this year!

© 2024 Robert Fairhead

Thanks to Gerd Altmann for the blank slate image from Pixabay.com.

N.B. You might like to read my 30-word stories from the #30Words30Days challenges for April, June and September 2014. 

Note: This post originally appeared on Tall And True.