Urban sky. Photo courtesy of David Mark, Pixabay, via Flash! Friday I’ve developed a new passion, and it’s one that doesn’t threaten my hubby in the least. Whew!
I’ve discovered I have a passion and somewhat of a knack for Flash Fiction, and I wanted to share some of my stories with you here.
There are several opportunities I’ve come across via Twitter, and in fact Twitter itself is a good exercise for tightening up your writing, let me tell you! I’ve never been someone with a shortage of words (probably why my hubs is more the strong, silent type), and you really discover what’s necessary and what isn’t in 140 characters!
Same is true of Flash Fiction. The requirements are varied depending on the contest holder’s prompt or not and set word count, but therein lays the fun. To discover whether you can tell a complete story with rich, sympathetic characters in a finite number of words is great practice even for longer novel writing, and maybe particularly for longer novel writing.
My creative writing professor, Don Matson, PhD, of the University of California San Diego, tasked us to read many Flash Fiction pieces such as Ernest Hemmingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants,” Raymond Carver’s, “One More Thing,” and Robert Parker’s, “The Professional.” Of course we wrote some of our own, though it was a process I didn’t appreciate or enjoy very much until recently, when I began to see more of it done by women.
According to Wikipedia’s description, Flash Fiction seems to have been a craft made most notable by men. O. Henry, Bradbury, Kafka, Vonnegut, and other greats share a reference with short, short fiction, so perhaps you can understand my hesitation to attempt to join their ranks. Thanks to social media and outlets like those I’ll share below, however, many women are quite successfully trying their hands at the art of less is more. I’ve found it a great way to get your feet wet, to practice restraint, and to exorcise those little bits and pieces that swim around in your brain, or that might prove to be sprouts of bigger stories one day.
It’s a process I’m delighted to participate in whenever the moment inspires, and I find it’s usually a knee-jerk reaction or image that pops into my mind, based on the topic or prompt. It’s like something comes over me, and that is perhaps the best lesson of all. It’s absolutely delectable to follow those little seeds wherever they take me, especially as a mental break yet mental exercise from working on my Novel In Progress, Bluebirds. I find that each little success I have makes me feel only more validated to call myself a writer, which is in itself a gift beyond measure.
I’ve discovered I have a passion and somewhat of a knack for Flash Fiction, and I wanted to share some of my stories with you here.
There are several opportunities I’ve come across via Twitter, and in fact Twitter itself is a good exercise for tightening up your writing, let me tell you! I’ve never been someone with a shortage of words (probably why my hubs is more the strong, silent type), and you really discover what’s necessary and what isn’t in 140 characters!
Same is true of Flash Fiction. The requirements are varied depending on the contest holder’s prompt or not and set word count, but therein lays the fun. To discover whether you can tell a complete story with rich, sympathetic characters in a finite number of words is great practice even for longer novel writing, and maybe particularly for longer novel writing.
My creative writing professor, Don Matson, PhD, of the University of California San Diego, tasked us to read many Flash Fiction pieces such as Ernest Hemmingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants,” Raymond Carver’s, “One More Thing,” and Robert Parker’s, “The Professional.” Of course we wrote some of our own, though it was a process I didn’t appreciate or enjoy very much until recently, when I began to see more of it done by women.
According to Wikipedia’s description, Flash Fiction seems to have been a craft made most notable by men. O. Henry, Bradbury, Kafka, Vonnegut, and other greats share a reference with short, short fiction, so perhaps you can understand my hesitation to attempt to join their ranks. Thanks to social media and outlets like those I’ll share below, however, many women are quite successfully trying their hands at the art of less is more. I’ve found it a great way to get your feet wet, to practice restraint, and to exorcise those little bits and pieces that swim around in your brain, or that might prove to be sprouts of bigger stories one day.
It’s a process I’m delighted to participate in whenever the moment inspires, and I find it’s usually a knee-jerk reaction or image that pops into my mind, based on the topic or prompt. It’s like something comes over me, and that is perhaps the best lesson of all. It’s absolutely delectable to follow those little seeds wherever they take me, especially as a mental break yet mental exercise from working on my Novel In Progress, Bluebirds. I find that each little success I have makes me feel only more validated to call myself a writer, which is in itself a gift beyond measure.
Capbreton. Photo courtesy of Makunin, @ Pixabay via Flash! Friday If you are a writer in your deepest of hearts, and wish to take a crack at some Flash Fiction yourself, I encourage you to start reading it first, and to give it a try through one of the many outlets available today. Win or not, I’m always delighted with my results, and the pace of the contests often frees me from procrastination and the compulsive and usual need to rehash, review, tweak and perfect each little word. It’s kind of a skinny-dipping-under-a-full-moon approach that I find deliciously freeing (cause Lord knows I don’t do THAT anymore…if I ever did…. I’m not telling!!)!
Flash Fiction is often dark, but it doesn’t have to be, as you can see from my first win with @99fiction, Never Dreamed:
[Posted here as ever so slightly edited, still 99(!) words or less]
Never Dreamed
She stands before them, the backs of her knees sweat, fingertips tingle. A crisp long red velvet skirt, handmade with matching hair bow, love and pom pon fringe, her only conscious thought.
Small at five upon vast planks, the Christmas congregation ponders what will come.
The introduction plays. Words are trapped in a cupboard, too high. She takes a deep breath and opens wide as a sparrow. If speaking was required, she would have failed, but with music comes words, with words come smiles.
A few bars have set her fate. An attention seeker is born.
--Kim Jorgensen Gane ©2013, all rights reserved
My second win was with Mary Papas for, The Dinner Date, I believe we had to be between 300 and 500 words, this is 409, and I hope you’ll give Mary’s books of flash fiction a read:
[Posted here as since slightly edited]
[Posted here as since slightly edited]
The Dinner Date
She applied her scarlet lipstick, following the delicate shape of her flume with care. She leaned close to the mirror to remove an errant speck of mascara from her lid with a perfectly matched and manicured fingernail.
Step back; assess. Her smooth black dress was perfectly pressed; cinching at the waist and crossing in the front to reveal just a hint of her décolleté.
Not bad for this birthday marking her mid-fortieth. She wished her husband was home to celebrate, but alas, international business and money and substance called more noisily. She hoped her fiftieth would hold enough importance for him to stay home, or that he might invite her along. Though she’d grown weary years ago of accompanying him on such demanding business trips.
In the meantime, she admired the blaze of diamonds at her ears and wrist; consolation gifts of his absence from other important occasions--guilt appeasers, loneliness absolvers; pretty, but accusing.
She would not be dining alone this evening, however, and she thought deliciously of what her date might wear. He was probably brushing his teeth and carefully gelling his hair just now. Perhaps he was selecting a tie in her favorite color; some shade of lavender or Icelandic blue, to match his roguish eyes.
Evenings out were rare for them: stolen moments amid the pace of reality; of responsibility; of all at once drudgery and chaos.
She donned her glittering shawl, slipped her slender, red-tipped toes into her most delicious and precarious red pumps, and carefully made her way down the curving stairs to where he waited patiently at the bottom.
He gazed up at her with a smile that reflected her beauty; that said she was the only woman in the world, and always would be. She paused midway, reveling in it; knowing it was fleeting.
At last she neared the bottom. She grasped the confident outstretched hand he offered to help her meet the gleaming marble.
He wrapped his arms lovingly around her small waist, and she warmly returned his embrace.
She kissed the top of his head, as only her red heels allowed her once again to do; not caring whether her lips left a mark there. In fact, she hoped they would leave an indelible impression right down onto his heart. He’d promised her they would when she’d delivered him to kindergarten, clutching her kiss in his palm, trembling and holding back tears, five all-too-short years before.
--Kim Jorgensen Gane ©2013, all rights reserved
And I’m deeply honored to have received an Honorable Mention for Retribution, in the most recent Flash! Friday Contest that occurs weekly, amid some very tough competition (I love that Rebekah works so hard to find us great photo prompts like the two above, and that our micro fiction is entered as comments under the prompt to be enjoyed and commented on by all). It is 272 words:
[Posted here as ever so slightly edited, same word count]
[Posted here as ever so slightly edited, same word count]
Retribution
It had been years since she’d seen anything more than this small slice of sky…years since she’d seen a flower bloom, dipped her toe into a cool stream, or dug in and turned the dirt, or picked a tomato off a vine she’d cultivated from seed or sprout. It had been years since she’d bit into its flesh, still warm from the sun, letting its juices drip down off her elbow in a scarlet river.
The last time she’d dug in the dirt is what landed her here.
The Brighton Women’s Correctional Facility, smack in the heart of her hometown’s downtown, was supposed to be a place for rehabilitation and learning. But what really happened beneath that small slice of sky, through which seldom a bird or plane passed, was neither rehabilitation nor learning. She supposed you could call it “learning” to survive in one of the roughest, most rank women’s prisons on the planet. Learning how to get fed from one meal to the next, by bargaining or stealing or unsavory favors. Learning how not to get shanked for looking cross-eyed at no one. Learning which ball-busting guards to avoid or befriend, and learning precisely what it would cost you.
She could still smell the loamy spring soil, and feel it’s coolness in her hands. She remembered waiting for the perfect moment to do what needed doing, however much she didn’t want to, and however much she did.
Once he’d touched her baby sister, Daddy had to die.
Every day under that small slice of sky was worth it.
--Kim Jorgensen Gane ©2013, all rights reserved
Last but not least, it didn’t win or earn a mention, but just because I loved it, here’s another 209-word example of one of my Flash! Friday entries, Impasse:
Impasse
Persephone’s eyes blinked at the searing bright light. Her ears welcomed the waves and the ocean breeze that caressed them, and her skin eagerly drank in the moist air. If only it wasn’t sea water as far as her troubled eyes could see, her parched lips and tongue and gullet and very cells would drink it in, too.
Her fingernails were bloodied and torn by her attempts to scale the pitched wall left broken and crumbling in the wake of Zeus’s anger.
It was her only hope of escape.
Hermes’ deal that granted her a mere six months above, just wasn’t enough. This latest squabble between Zeus and Hades, felt like the perfect opening; pomegranate seeds, be-damned!
Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the sunlight, but it felt hot on her desiccated skin. She knew the salt water would cause her wounds to sting mercilessly, but she couldn’t get herself into the water fast enough. She hoped she could resist the temptation to drink it, to lap it up like an eager puppy. Her thirst was so great.
It was a long way down.
She looked back the way she’d come.
She looked at the azure water, crashing below.
She would have cried.
But she had no tears.
--Kim Jorgensen Gane ©2013, all rights reserved
Oh yes! I’ve enjoyed another amazing success! I’m attending BlogHer ’13 in Chicago at the end of July, because I’ve recently learned that out of the hundreds of thousands(!) of blogs posted to BlogHer in the last year, I’m a top 100 VOICES OF THE YEAR HONOREE for my second featured post, “The Enlightened Middle Majority and Why the Sides Are Alienating Us.” Enlightened Middle Majority is the same post that has been adapted for inclusion in the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics, that’s due out sometime in 2013.
I hope my stories will convince you to try Flash Fiction yourself, because you just never know where it might lead...and what the hell...why don't you enter a little below in the comments!!
I'd love to read 200 OR FEWER WORDS OF FLASH FICTION OF YOURS about FOLLOWING A DREAM--any sort of dream! If you have a Twitter handle, please include it and your word count.
No contest, no deadline...just challenge yourself, ENJOY and be inspired!
Yours truly, WRITER, and author:
--Kim Jorgensen Gane
I hope my stories will convince you to try Flash Fiction yourself, because you just never know where it might lead...and what the hell...why don't you enter a little below in the comments!!
I'd love to read 200 OR FEWER WORDS OF FLASH FICTION OF YOURS about FOLLOWING A DREAM--any sort of dream! If you have a Twitter handle, please include it and your word count.
No contest, no deadline...just challenge yourself, ENJOY and be inspired!
Yours truly, WRITER, and author:
--Kim Jorgensen Gane
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