By Mitchell Duran
It was a sunny, crisp Wednesday afternoon after my bread delivery shift at Josey Baker Bread in San Francisco when I realized or permitted myself to feel that New Year’s Eve was close.
“Jesus,” I said, looking at my phone, noting the date. “It’s tomorrow.”
After enduring…
“It All Started with a Word” is a series where I choose any word from Robert Hendrickson’s great book Words and Phrase Origins, 4th Edition and write, well, whatever comes to mind. The exercise is a mixture of freewriting, research, and play.
“Duck and Cover” is a method of personal…
“It All Started with a Word” is a series where I choose any word from Robert Hendrickson’s great book Words and Phrase Origins, 4th Edition and write, well, whatever comes to mind. The exercise is a mixture of freewriting, research, and play.
Boccie. An Italian game of lawn bowling played…
Your Early Morning Freewrite
As I drove around San Francisco on my morning delivery, dodging waving apologists as they sprinted across the street like erratic pigeons, I mentally cursed my jean jacket for holding my sunglasses hostage at home. The sun was high in the sky and bright. I couldn’t…
Your Early Morning Freewrite
There was no way into Bentham’s room. No one had a key. There was no secret door or code. Not a soul knew where it even was or that it even existed. Bentham was to themselves, and was not to everyone else. A sympathetic person would…
Your Early Morning Freewrite
We knew things were bad when the heat began to rise and stayed rising.
The streets started to melt underneath our feet, black sticky, smoky tar that we couldn’t get from underneath our fingernails. Cars began to pop and sputter like popcorn in a metal cage…
Your Early Morning Freewrite — /3
A stood outside a delivery room in a hospital like any other. It was a relatively calm Sunday afternoon, but somebody was being born, a new beginning. Doctors and nurses rushed by, paying little attention to A. They assumed they were with the family…
Your Afternoon Freewrite — /2
As the final letter in the Greek alphabet, Omega is often used to denote the last, the end, or the ultimate limit of a set, in contrast to Alpha.
The first thing O noticed about the casino was the wild electric multi-colored whirring machines in…
Your Early Morning Freewrite — /1
A made tea with the sound of ravens hacking the dirt outside. They never heard that before. Like everything to A, this was something new. A watched them from the window, somewhat afraid of the curved winged’ things caught A watching in the act…
Your Evening Freewrite — 2/
Vincent, at that moment, felt a sudden sense of history to this mysterious woman. He couldn’t pinpoint a time in the past, had no recollection of the present. Still, the electricity of familiarity vibrated in the space between their bodies in the encroaching dusk. There…
Mitchell Duran is a freelance writer. He earned a Master’s in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 2019. Find more work at Mitchellduran.com
