The Zeiger Family Homestead Blog

Our local radio station airs National Public Radio (NPR) as their national news source. We listen regularly, and have always attended, with a fair amount of interest, their Weekend All Things Considered segment, Three Minute Fiction. This is a periodic competition in which listeners submit stories of 600 words or less, to be judged by a noted author. We’re paying particular attention to the current round, because I entered a story in the competition.

Normally, I don’t enter contests. I’ve never liked writing prompts and limitations. In grade school, I despised “story starts;” someone else started that story, I preferred to hear where they wanted to take it. I would rather write my own stories, without the prompt.

This time around, however, the temptation simply proved to be too great. After all, as soon as I heard the current round’s limitations, I realized I had already written a story much like what they called for. Continue reading →