TeenageTells- Mink ‘26

Last Thursday, the results came in. I was highly commended for BOTH my short story and my poem, called A Little Birdie Told Me and Lives Bigger Than Ours respectively. The theme was trees, and I’m so happy about both that got chosen!

In ‘celebration’ I’ll be talking about how I wrote both of these (briefly).

My Poem:

Lives Bigger Than Ours came purely from the prompt of trees and I played with that idea. What comes in treees? A generational tree.

A poem for me usually only takes a few minutes to write, because I make something spontaneous and emotional. But this one took almost an hour, which doesn’t sound like much, but for a poem of mine was significant. I kept re-reading it and adding and thinking of the different parts.

My top tip for poetry?

Write something that you feel. Write whatever you like. Poetry has no rules. Write something personal and specific, that might be able to be interpreted in a few ways.

My Story:

A short story to me is the hardest. It’s too short for a full development, but too story-like to be vague and mysterious like a poem. So here I took a story I had written for Christmas. Remember ChristmasTales? I took A Little Birdie Told Me from there, and shortened it (which was the real challenge). All those stories I wrote were done similarly: a meaning, a concept I want to explore, and a character who would have a journey outside the story. But a fragment will fit. Be something I need to tell.

The one that was chosen specifically was based on the two different sides of my family merging together, into one big happy memory. I want to keep the magic of my holidays in Poland alive, and I thought what better way to do it than in a short story.

My best tip with Short Stories:

Don’t make it the only important part of your characters life, but don’t make this moment completely dependent on the past or future. It’s just a part. No one’s meaning of life and whole world is developed in 500 words. It’s impossible. That’s a plot recap. Make it an important part of the journey.

Thank you for reading! I’ll see you next week! I hope you found this useful!

P.S. I’m going to have an extra post this week, so keep an eye out here and on my instagram @teenagetales9

Hope you have a creative week!

If you want to read my work, get the Mink book at mklitfest.org