FogHorn March 2, 2017  Nancy Margulies - Sudden Fiction/Short Shorts

The first story she read to the Rotarian audience was built on the prompt "chicken." In the story, chicken was a regular Sunday dinner in the main character's family, which had their own chickens.  That character, a young girl, named some of the chickens, in the hope of saving them from winding up as dinner. She even tried to save one chicken by hiding it in her lunch box.

 

The next prompt was "church," and in that story, the protagonist gleefully described living in a church building but worshiping the devil "on my own time." The storyteller was "crazy for all things devilish," keeping a Lucifer box in the basement along with candles and devil worship sing-along books. It wasn't really spooky, Nancy said, but, after all, folks don't go to hell like they used to. The story ended with the devil planning to retire and go into politics. 

The next prompt was "patient," an admonition which the protagonist, a little boy, often heard from his mother when he was begging for a little more time for something. His Papa had moved to Miami. It was implied that the father had had a wild life which the son hoped  to share, until his dad retired.
The next prompt was a series of numbers, " 11, 12, 13 ... " The story involved a calendar date and a game of chicken. That game involved skateboarding down a hill and around a curve, which led to a frozen moment in which the main character's life flashes before her eyes.
In her writing group, Nancy said, everyone wrote their stories in 12 minutes, and enjoyed doing so. She herself didn't plan out her stories; she said that each one wrapped up with an ending that became apparent in the course of writing it, as she just allowed elements of the story to simply, spontaneously show up.
The next prompt was "separation," and the story involved conjoined twins, a boy and a girl. The girl learned to move parts of her body separately, but at age 4, they were separated. After the surgery, the girl woke up in the hospital to find that "the rest of me was across the room." After three years, the twins were leading separate lives, but at night the girl still dreamed of them joined together.

 
The next story prompt was "songs" and Nancy jokingly said she could remember the words to songs from the 1950s "but just not what happened last week." To prove it, she quoted a few lyrics from "Love Potion Number Nine," "You  Musta Been a Beautiful Baby," "Strangers in the Night," and "You Are So Beautiful to Me." 
Nancy was asked if she ever got stumped in writing her stories. She said that sometimes she did, but when that happened it was just a matter of trusting the process, to get back on track. She spoke of writing without judgement, and how we all have the capacity to tell stories if we don't block ourselves.

She described how using sign language to communicate with early clients who were hearing-impaired  benefited her also. She said that it helped her develop skills in writing a story rapidly, in being present in the moment and in "allowing the process." She also spoke about her books of short stories, which are for sale over Amazon. In answer to a question about deafness and written language, she talked about how language is structured and communicated with images and repetition. Ideally, deaf people learn English as a second language after first learning American Sign Language, she said