from Ellen Parker

With all due respect to those writers who say they revise each flash piece
again and again--and when they say this I assume they mean they write a
draft and then take it out sometime later and look at it and revise it and
put it away and take it out again, over and over during the course of an
extended period of time--I have to admit that I do not always work that way.However, I take a very long time--at one sitting--to write each piece. I
rarely have a piece that just "flies off my fingers." I take hours at a
stretch to write a piece, and all I might end up with is a little flash! But
I revise extensively as I go. I examine each word and sentence as I write
it. I ask myself: Is this really what I want to say here? Are these the
words I want?

I have written a lot of flash and I have read a lot of flash. I know all the
easy ways to take a story. So I ask myself: What can I say here that will go
against the grain? That might surprise people? (That might surprise me!) I
am always aiming for freshness--and unexpectedness. I want readers to go,
Whoa. I didn't know this is where we'd end up. Or: Look at that word!
Sometimes a flash can succeed on the strength of one well-placed word.

Spending hours at a stretch looking into your own head, probing, searching
for freshness, honesty, novelty--see, right now I'm seeking one more word; I
am going to think and think until I find that one right word that I want
here to complete this thought--buffoonery? Drollery? (Sometimes I'm just
looking for funny bit.) Spending hours at a stretch looking into your own
head, probing, searching for freshness, honesty, novelty, drollery--it's
exhausting. Words, phrases, sentences get added and then shitcanned. For
perhaps an entire half-hour I'll just sit there, trying to come up with one
goddamn word! By the time I've written the flash (hours have passed), I've
flipped through--examining, trying out, ridiculing, adoring--hundreds and
hundreds of words.

Then I'll put the flash away for a long time. It might be months. Sometimes
years. And then I'll look at it again and I'll go, Who the hell wrote this?
I can see exactly where it goes wrong. I'll fix it. Then I'll put it away
again. And then maybe an editor or someone I know at Zoetrope might go, Hey, Ellen, what happened to that flash you wrote a long time ago? You know, the one that used the word "chiffarobe"? I'm like, It's sitting in my computer. And they'll say, Can I have it? And I'll go, Yeah.

Bio: Ellen Parker is a fiction writer and the editor of FRiGG, an online literary magazine that runs flash, short stories, and poetry.

Read "So Long" in SmokeLong Quarterly

Read "Something Blew" in SmokeLong Quarterly

Read "Summer TV" in Press 1

from Cami Park

Titling Very Short Fiction

Thinking of a Title for Your Story

So you’ve followed one word after another until you’ve finished and now you have a piece of very short fiction. What to call it? Is there an earthworm in it? You could just call it Earthworm. Et voila. Simple enough. Or maybe there isn’t an earthworm in your story, but there could be. In this case, especially, call it Earthworm. Joseph Young does this in one of his microfictions, except he calls it Spyglass, not Earthworm, and you can see how it completes the story so perfectly, even from the beginning.

Spyglass

I wanted a new way. So I asked my friends, Who do I most resemble?

Shakespeare, said one, because of the earring.

FDR, said another, because of the wheelchair.

Hitler, said a third, because of the way he touches his hair.

I took these with me and went to the ocean. The fish flipped on the silver waves. All around was the sand, ten thousand miles of the never changing sand.

Really long titles are another unique way to service your very short fictions. They can enhance a story structurally when they’re as long as or longer than the story itself; creatively, they can be used to supplement or as a counterpoint to the story’s content. Very long titles are one of my favorite things in small fictions, when used well, like here, by Nicolle Elizabeth, in elimae:

Levar Burton Was Not A Babe On Star Trek To Me Because He Was A Trusted Individual I Watched For Information On Reading Rainbow As A Child

I took notes. I was a very serious six year old. Again every part of me itches as it did then.

Thinking of a Story for Your Title

Sometimes random word combinations float across our consciousness, and similar to thinking, “Wow, that’d be a great name for a band!” we think, “Wow, that’d be a great title for a story!" Great band names and great titles are often interchangeable, which helps if you’re starting a band, or know someone who is. There can be many stories, but only one band.

Wow, that’d be a great title for a story! Many Stories, One Band. Seems too good to go to waste. So what now? There are the words, at the top of a blank page; it’s time to tease out the story. One thing that makes this an interesting title, aside from the Many/One contrast, is the multiple meanings of the words “stories” and “band”—stories can be stories you tell, stories in a building; bands can be musical, wedding bands, bands of rubber or other things. In very short fiction, multiple meanings can be used to great effect as shortcuts. I’m going to try to do that here, on the spot, with this title, and hope it kind of works.

Many Stories, One Band

Falling. Last in a series. Counting windows. Sun glances gold off pale, curled fingers. Blinding. The end.

Okay, I think you can see what I did there. Hope it helps.

The end.

Bio: Cami Park writes small things various, and is often filled with an impossible, irredeemable love. She maintains a web presence at Mungo.

Read "On Mondays, Francesca Takes the Stairs" at Smokelong Quarterly

Read "after life" at elimae

Read "The Oddest Thing Ever Found in a Pocket" at FRiGG

from Barry Graham

Fuck flash fiction. It doesn’t exist. Get it out of your head. As writers, it’s easy for us to define ourselves and our writing by genre. I’m a poet. I’m a fiction writer. I write prose poems. There is nothing more detrimental to your writing then classifying, defining, limiting yourself and your perception of what writing is, then to convince yourself that you are one of these things. Put your love and hatred and passion and shame down on paper first (or your word processor, this is 2009 after all), then let the words tell you what they want to be, let them define themselves, instead of you forcing them into a category. What is a poem? What is a flash fiction? And who are you as their creator? Defining yourself by genre and forcing your writing to match that diluted self perception is limiting your potential and your creativity. Just write great words and let them be what they want to be. What do you want to be?

Bio: Barry Graham teaches writing at Rutgers and wrote The National Virginity Pledge (Another Sky Press). Look for him online at www.dogzplot.com.

Read "The Same Story" in FRiGG

Read "Blackhorse" in LITnIMAGE

Read "Apollo" in LITnIMAGE

from Scott Garson

[note from the sheriff of this here town: this is a re-post of a blog entry written by SG for my junior level fiction writing class--maybe a year or two ago?]

Dear English 398
Your professor and I go way back. Let me tell you about your professor. One time she and I were at this bar and –

Sorry. Forgetting myself here. On to business.

I'm tempted just now to use a fancy term to describe the writing of 'flash,' as people call it. Like all such terms, it loses in exactitude whatever it might gain in sex appeal, but I'll go ahead and use it: the art of the dive.

Whatever could I mean by this? Let's see.

For readers, the full-length short story might offer immersion, twenty minutes, half an hour's worth. This accords w/ that dictum of Poe's that you've all probably read at some point or at least heard about: the short story has to be readable in one sitting. What this doesn't accord with, at least in most cases, is the experience of writing a full-length story. It takes time. It takes some people (wince) a lot longer than it does others, but it takes time, and because of that many of the writers I know are liable to think of full-length stories as an investment, one that is made hopefully but that entails (sorry for the unpleasant terminology) risk.

I'm just about to arrive at some kind of point here. Hang on!

If you're a writer, and you're going to invest time in something you know from the outset might fail, there's going to be a temptation: work more carefully! Keep your eyes open! Catch mistakes before they kill you! But here's the problem. The part of your brain you stimulate when you urge yourself to take care is not the part of your brain that writes good fiction. (This might be one explanation for what people call 'writer's block'….)

So. A dilemma. For me at least, the very short story is one way out. It's a dive. An escape from the daylight of my brain, from my plans and ambitions, etc. Swoosh, I'm in the water. And I know that I'll be back up soon – so the investment-risk thing doesn't apply.

Yes, the analogy is cloying…. We'll leave it behind.

I'll say this: I think some of my own best stuff is very short stuff. In that category one of my personal favorites is a story that I wrote on a day when I was busy and not technically 'writing.' I was busy, as I say, but when I had a second at one point I read a short by Lydia Davis. I'm embarrassed not to recall the title just now, but I loved it. I wasn't sure why I loved it. I didn't immediately see what made it a story. But I loved it as fiction, and when I set it down my blood was fizzing. I wanted to write something, you know. And so I did. What I wrote hadn't been an 'idea' in advance -- or an image, a 'kernel,' any of that. It had been nothing.

Of course this is all simplified. I'm not suggesting, for example, that with shorts there's no rewrites (stuff in the first paragraph of the one I just mentioned ended up in the last paragraph of the final version). I'm not suggesting…..

Oh enough of this. You see what I'm suggesting, right?

Happy writes, all. Bedevil her for me,

s

Bio: Scott Garson is the editor of Wigleaf. His chapbook, AMERICAN GYMNOPÉDIES is forthcoming from Willows Wept Press. Scott blogs at Patterns of Silver Light and So Forth

Read "Eight Micros" at FRiGG

Read "American Gothic" at Smokelong Quarterly

Read "Ode to a Bad Album" at Hobart

from Joseph Young

Resist Interpretation

I belong to an art critique group, the only writer amongst 5 to 10 visual artists on any given critique night. It’s a critique group like any writing group; people display their art work, people talk about it, suggest ways to improve, etc. We had a critique last night, and of course, true to form, I started an argument. I have many problems with workshops, the experience of them rubs me the wrong way in lots of ways, but chief among my problems is that I’m incessantly the devil’s advocate. It’s an itch, I can’t stop its rising, and when I scratch it, I make arguments.

One of the things that came up last night has come up many times in writing workshops. We were critiquing one painter’s work—a woman, Kathy, who uses stencil and silkscreen in addition to paint in her work—and another woman, Maggie, another painter, an extremely accomplished artist and art college lecturer, told Kathy that she needed to give us more, that her work was very good but it always left her, Maggie, feeling that she didn’t know her intentions, that Kathy’s work always approached understanding but always stopped short of giving us, her audience, what we needed to get inside the work, what we needed to really get the work.

Now, let me stop a moment and tell you, if you’re going to write very short fiction, and I’ll go ahead and say it now, if you’re going to write good very short fiction, this is going to happen to you. People are going to read your work and they are going to scratch their heads and they are going to say, Hmm, this is really nice, but I feel like I need more. I feel like it approaches me getting inside this world, but it stops short, I want more.

Kathy’s painting, in my opinion, does not need to give us more, which is the argument I got into with Maggie. It’s okay that it stops short of giving Maggie, and the rest of us, what we need, everything we need, to feel comfortable in its world. It’s okay if we can’t entirely orient ourselves to Kathy’s subject, her use of paint, her composition. This discomfort we feel is part of what makes Kathy’s work work, what gives it tension and mystery and interest. Resist interpretation, I told Kathy, and Maggie, and the rest.

Good very short fiction, especially when it gets really short, resists interpretation. It has to, by its very nature. There aren’t enough words in very short fiction to give us the whole world. As writers of vsf, we can only give our readers so much, so much texture, so much character, so much backstory. The form demands that we leave things out, lots of things.

This leaving out is going to frustrate some readers, it is going to make them uncomfortable. Some readers—intelligent, creative folks—will insist you give them what they need to feel oriented, to feel satisfied that they understand what you, the writer, are up to, what your intentions are. The pressure will get intense, at times. Whole rooms full of people may say the same thing: give us more. People don’t like to be left wanting, left in discomfort.

Of course, there are different kinds of leaving out. Of course. Some leaving out may be bad for your story, some leaving out might be the result of you not having control of your words, your characters. But! Leaving out is going to happen—if you write vsf. It has to. It must, by its very nature. And, in my opinion, the best vsf leaves much out. The best vsf, in my opinion, leaves the reader in a state of discomfort, a state of wanting more. The best vsf does not try to replicate what short stories do, giving us vivid settings and deep understandings of character. It can't, it's too short. The best vsf resists interpretation. Resist interpretation.

Bio: Joseph lives and writes in Baltimore, MD. His book of microfiction, Easter Rabbit, will be released from Publishing Genius Press in December 2009.

Read "12 Micros" at FRiGG

Read "3 Micros" at Lamination Colony

Read "5 Micros" at Grey Sparrow Journal