Oneword.com Entries

Oneword.com is a site where you go on and are given a word, a textbox and a timer bar with 60 seconds counting down. The idea is to read the word and immediately start writing, whatever comes to mind, and write until the timer runs out. The posted word is the title of each piece. It is not required that the word be used in the entry, it's just supposed to be a launching point for some quick writing. These are some of mine from October.

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Left
If I was to imagine my life as a wandering trail with forks and offshoots and a constant flow of different choices, then I often wonder what would happen if I’d made a left where I made a right, or stuck to one trail when I strayed, and I think of how many bad decisions I could fix if I could change one turn.

But then I think of all the good decisions I might never have gotten the chance to make.

I think the past is better left alone.

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Chatter
The voices that crept through the static on Pop’s ham radio were barely discernible. Every word and inflection was full of excited fear, an interesting mix that I’d never heard before but was immediately able to identify, and it seemed that no one was waiting to hear what anyone else was saying; each sur vivor with a mic was focused solely on rattling off his accounts, theories and ideas. I preferred the static.

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Siren
Those goddamn voices carry over the waves and through the wind and somehow slip by every creak and groan of this ship to reach the ears of weary sailors and beckon them with unspoken promises. All they need to do is tease the imagination with the possibility of an unknown possibility, it’s not about a given expectation or a false guarantee, just baiting the wistful minds of men who have so much unfulfilled. These men, their wishes and desires, will fill in the promises and contracts they expect and part of them has to know they’re going into the storm for nothing.

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Missed
This isn’t about the past or people who’ve left or opportunities I never took. But rather how subjective the concept of “missing” is; you decide you missed when you don’t hit the target you had in mind, maybe instead we should pay more attention to where we do land and think of it as an unexpected hit.