Is publishing your fiction in a blog the height of cheese?

Recently, I received this assignment:

A morbid piece of trivia inspired Robert Olen Butler’s Severance, his new book of stories. As Tom Barbash writes, Butler had learned that a “human head continues in a state of consciousness for one and a half minutes after decapitation. Having then determined…that in a ‘heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute,’ Butler arrived at a new—and unlikely to be replicated—art form, the vignette of the severed head, told in exactly 240 words. 62 “talking heads” are at the center of Butler’s collection, including John the Baptist, a German woman who angered Hitler, and Nicole Brown Simpson, who catches a last glimpse of her husband. It appears O.J. is running for the end zone and, she says, “I can see what’s tucked there in the crook of his arm and it is me, it is my head, and I stare into my own eyes.”


For your Dead Head Vignette, select a figure from your cycle or invent a new one who will fit into your cycle and imagine his/her last thoughts in a heightened state of emotion and in exactly 240 words. How will this unique perspective shape your prose style? What do they see that sheds new light on the events in their world? A truly inventive title should begin the piece. Remember, this is YOUR work--be imaginative...did the person lose his or her head in a car crash, a climbing accident, a dream? Remember, exactly 240 words.

I chose Steve, the father of Sarah, a couple of people I wrote out just this week. I was having a little trouble figuring Steve out, so I thought this would be a good chance to figure out what his deal was. I think I got a start at least. If you like, read what I wrote below. Or... Write your own! It was pretty interesting to think about.

“The Door”

Shit…shit, I left the door unlocked. Sarah will kill me if – oh my god, I’m already dead. Is this what dead looks like? I wish someone would sew me… ew, there’s my body. That’s me, that’s my…why the FUCK did I want to rush for that stupid elevator? I couldn’t gotten the next one. Now Sarah will have no, oh god, what have I done? Her mother’s a drunk and now her dad DECAPITATED himself in an elevator? Who will take her? That fucking bastard Mike. I never… I wanted to, FUCK. How could he do that? How could I be so impotent? I deserve to die a horrible, ridiculous, impotent-man elevator death. Oh Sarah. If I could just catch the next elevator, God, I swear I’ll fix it. I’ll fix her and I’ll fix him, oh I’ll fix him right into prison. I want to make it right. I want to help my daughter. I want to have 25 minutes with Emily at the office, 15 sweaty minutes, it’s been so long and now I’m dying, basically a reborn virgin, but don’t say birth because this is its opposite… How did those doors do that? What the fuck kind of he-man elevators are those, anyway? Every day, I rode them (45 minutes, Emily, that’s all I wanted), and they seemed so innocuous, so innocent like my beautiful baby daughter, so sure and smart until he….