Flash Fiction Chronicles

For the week of February 7 through February 14, Flash Fiction Chronicles is  having its second String-of-10 Contest—String of 10 TWO—for the best 250-word story written from a specific prompt: a series of ten words given to you on February 7, 2010.

JOEL WILLANS, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and winner of the Yeovil Prize and Global Short Story Award  is our guest judge for this contest.  Find out more about Joel BELOW.

 GUIDELINES

1. Read the contest’s String of 10 Writing Prompt which will be available at 12:01 on February 7, 2010 here as well as on the FFC Daily Prompt Page and at Gay Degani’s Author Thread at Every Day Fiction. 
2. The contest is open to stories of  up to 250 words. Entries over the word limitation will be disregarded.
3. Submit via email addressed to flashfictionblog@everydayfiction.com.   All entries must be copy and pasted into the body of the email. No attachments will be opened.
4. There is no entry fee.
5. You may enter as many 3 separate and different stories up to 250-words each. 
6. All stories must contain at least four words from the String of 10.  Any stories without at least four words from the string of 10 will be disregarded.  The prompt words may be slightly modified such as tense, number, etc.  (Example: walk can be amended to walks, walked, even walker or walkers)
7. The aphorism that is given doesn’t not need to be found in the story, but rather to be used as an additional source of inspiration.  No story will be judged on its use.  Note may be taken if a story uses the aphorism in an inspired way.
8. What matters most is your story, not the prompt words or quotation.  Seamless integration of any four of the prompt words is the goal. 
9. All entries must be in English, original, unpublished, and not submitted or accepted elsewhere at the time of submission. Flash Fiction Chronicles/Every Day Fiction/Every Day Publishing reserves one-time publication rights to the 1st- through-3rd winning entries to be published at Every Day Fiction and Flash Fiction Chronicles.
10. Entries must be received via email by 11:59 PDT Sunday, February 14.
11. Winners will be notified by March 20.  Publication will follow in April. 
12. The preliminary decision the judges of the top 10 and the final decision by guest judge, Joel Willans, of the top three stories are final.

 Stories from the first String-of-10 Contest can be read at these links.

 1^st Place: The Haircut by Sharon E. Trotter

2^nd Place: The Forever Summer by Mary J. Daley

3^rd Place: Choices Made by Jim O’Loughlin

PRIZES

1st Place: Winner will have his or her story published at Every Day Fiction in April 1010 and be paid the standard payment of $3.00 per story.   A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles  will also be awarded as well as an “I Write Every Day” t-shirt.

2nd and 3rd Place: Winners will have their stories published at Flash Fiction Chronicles in April.  (NOTE:There is no payment for publication at Flash Fiction Chronicles.)  A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles  will also be awarded to both 2nd and 3rd place winners.

 ABOUT JOEL WILLANS

Originally from Suffolk in the UK, Joel Willans has lived in Canada, Finland and Peru. A copywriter and travel blogger, he now gallivants between East Anglia, Helsinki and Spain. Joel’s stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and published in more than a dozen anthologies and many magazines. In 2008, he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and won the Yeovil Prize and Global Short Story Award. “By ma biscuit or kiss ma fish”, his short story collection, is currently shortlisted for the Scott Prize, while his flash fiction can be found at places like Prick-of-the Spindle, Pank, Word Riot and Boston Literary Magazine. His story “One Bright Moment” is Every Day Fiction’s most popular story of all time.

I found myself snared by a detective story last week when a stranger e-mailed me from California. He’d found an article I’d written on children’s book author and illustrator Holling Clancy Holling (Paddle-to-the-Sea) and wanted to know if the man had ever served in the Army. I replied that nothing in my research popped up, but I was cc’ing the director of a historical society in Michigan devoted to enshrining Holling in children’s literature.

A daily exchange of e-mails among the Californian, the archivist and me in New Jersey continued for a week as, together, we uncovered the probability that the jacket with the buck sergeant’s chevron was indeed one Holling wore in 1918.

I love these out-of-the-blue queries. There was the National Parks Service employee putting together an exhibit who wanted to know more about my write-up on the actual first shots kicking off the Civil War—not those at Fort Sumter, but a battle at Fort Barrancas, Fla., four months earlier. And another query from an amateur historian—like me—asking about King Philip, who nearly drove the colonists out of New England, “I understand [Philip’s] head was displayed in Plymouth for 25 years. Is there any documentation as to what happened to the head after the display?” (No, and neither do we know what happened to Einstein’s brain after it was dissected and distributed around the world.)

Often, there’s no positive response. One person wrote from Holland, “I think I’m descended from Willem Kieft, the notorious governor of New Amsterdam [who massacred hundreds of Raritan, Wecquaesgeek and Wappinger tribes people].” It’s doubtful, I replied; Kieft was drowned at sea while being recalled to England. Or the high schooler stating, “I’m writing a paper on Bacon’s Rebellion [Virginia, 1675]. Can you tell me everything you know?” No, dammit! Do your homework.

It’s likely that writers welcome the figurative knock on the door that rescues them from the horror of filling a blank screen with captivating words. The unsolicited e-mail certifies the writer as expert, at least in the petitioner’s eyes. Receiving an accolade, like the elusive Pushcart Prize, or being included in an anthology also is validation that we’re doing something right.

But I have a deeper sense of appreciation for readers who respond. A writer’s fiction or non-fiction is broadcast to the world, receiving hundreds of hits on Big Pulp, Bewildering Stories, Military History Online, and other sites. This is information sharing—not communication. It’s akin to winking at a woman in a dark room: You know what you’re doing but not sure if she’s getting the message. Communication only takes place when a reader comments or writes back. And isn’t communication what we’re all searching for? Someone who responds like Holden Caulfield, who says, “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it”?

Yes! This is what the Internet has given us. A medium that encourages comments and questions to complete the circle of communication. That’s why I write. And respond to readers’ questions and comments. You can e-mail (w.giersbach@att.net) anytime and I’ll get back to you. Unless you ask me to do your homework.

Walter Giersbach’s fiction has appeared Bewildering Stories, Big Pulp, Every Day Fiction, Everyday Weirdness, Lunch Hour Stories, Mouth Full of Bullets, Mystery Authors, OG Short Fiction, Northwoods Journal, Paradigm Journal, Short Fiction World, Southern Fried Weirdness, The Short Humour Site and Written Word.  Two volumes of short stories, Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, have been published by Wild Child (www.wildchildpublishing.com).  He also served for three decades as director of communications for Fortune 500 companies.  Walter’s website can be found at http://allotropiclucubrations.blogspot.com.

There used to be a girl who bled her emotions, ideas, thoughts and dreams into books.

She bled them and resurrected them. Again and again, until reality blurred and she no longer recognised humans of flesh and blood but saw and sought out characters from, often brittle and silver fish infested pages; slices of paper that reeked deliciously of other peoples visions.

She was a frivolous fool. At her best she was fey. The number of times she tumbled into an undignified heap for having mistaken a callow character for something from her beloved books were countless! The number of times she woke up to find herself impaled by an irate teacher who demanded to know why she was grinning or looking weepy for no reason occurred too often to be entertaining to her schoolmates.

Behind her back they called her names. She didn’t  care. She had found Hemingway,  a man who had died just before her birth and fallen in love. She didn’t understand that. Death could not be a barrier. To her, he was alive, pulsating-ly alive, like a sea god come to her room in the moonlight.

It was a strange love. And it began with The Old Man and the Sea.  Becoming progressively obsessive with each book that she read.  After her fourth reading of that novella, and the devouring of volumes of Hemingway out of which some struck her more forcefully – Snows of Kilimanjaro, Torrents of Spring, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Islands in the Stream, A Farewell to Arms, To Have and Have Not…she even went ahead and read two of his nonfiction books – Death in the Afternoon and A Moveable Feast.

After that she was no longer able to differentiate between the books. In her heart they had become one churning sea of people and situations with the narratives often intertwining and getting tangled up like spools of embroidery thread stuffed into a very small container. The spools would stay stuffed and become like one motley homogeneous mass. In later years, she felt the lump in her brain every time her muse flicked his tongue over it. It was not an unpleasant sensation; quite the contrary.

During those young years, the confusion in her head didn’t stop her from reading. Nor did it diminish her love. Hemingway often visited her in the middle of a basketball game or a maths class. Suddenly everything would become liquid celadon; her aura turning somewhat witless. She would doodle in her maths exercises book instead of writing the sums. She would snatch the ball out of her own team mates hands and toss it to the other side without thinking. She vaguely comprehended the inappropriateness of her behaviour and tried to hide them with lame smart alecky remarks that convinced no one and did nothing for her reputation.

It was not that she only read Hemingway. There were many authors who gripped her, heart, mind and soul, intensely, madly. In that sense she was not a faithful lover. But she remained loyal to Earnest Miller Hemingway in the way the Devadasis remained loyal to their Temple Gods. There were strong and lasting relationships born of her readings of other authors. But Hemingway’s bearded face always hovered over the rim of her horizon. She could never visualize any writer the way she could conjure up an image of Hemingway instantly.

Years passed and for a time the struggle of existence forbade any deep reading. She read in snatches and bits. A phase came after she married and had children when she was reading only nursery rhymes and fables and Dr. Spock. The spectre of a smiling eyed white bearded Sea God rarely rose to haunt her. By this time she had married a smooth cheeked man with a dimple on his chin, whose only exposure to hunting had been a sparrow that he had killed as a twelve year old with his air gun and had been sick for days with the horror of that knowledge. He was a good man who was never jealous of her books.

One day this good man who was her husband decided to bring home the latest book by Hemingway, even though he had been dead for more than three decades. That was another magic about Hemingway. His books continued to spring up long after he died. No wonder she never truly believed him dead in the first place. Her husband wanted to give her a birthday present that would make her eyes light up the way diamonds are supposed to light up a woman’s eyes. He went out and bought True at First Light. She was delighted and started to read straightaway.

Halfway down the book she put it down. The liquid celadon feeling receded leaving a chalky taste in her palate. An emptiness washed over her in the afternoon light. Her husband saw the shadows and felt a little annoyed that he couldn’t please her after all.

It took her some weeks. During which time she went back again and again to the book, only to put it down again. For several years she did not open another Hemingway book; she did not reread any. When at at last she went back to reading Hemingway, she began again with The Old Man and the Sea.  And this time, she did not lose herself. She went out to sea with Santiago and returned, carrying his wounds in her heart but without being possessed of either Santiago or Hemingway.

(Taken from an earlier post in Writers & Writerisms)

Rumjhum Biswas is still living in Chennai, India, but in another part where there were no mosquitoes until the rains came and all the incy wincy spiders were washed away. No she isn’t implying that spiders eat mosquitoes, but if they did she’d become a millionaire by breeding spiders and selling them all over the world, instead of being another poor writer who gets to answer the door and the phone because she is at home and that means she has a cushy life! She has a blog to prove that it’s not: http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com. You can also find her at times at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

For the week of February 7 through February 14, Flash Fiction Chronicles is  having its second String-of-10 Contest—String of 10 TWO—for the best 250-word story written from a specific prompt: a series of ten words given to you on February 7, 2010.

JOEL WILLANS, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and winner of the Yeovil Prize and Global Short Story Award  is our guest judge for this contest.  Find out more about Joel BELOW.

 GUIDELINES

1. Read the contest’s String of 10 Writing Prompt which will be available at 12:01 on February 7, 2010 here as well as on the FFC Daily Prompt Page and at Gay Degani’s Author Thread at Every Day Fiction. 
2. The contest is open to stories of  up to 250 words. Entries over the word limitation will be disregarded.
3. Submit via email addressed to flashfictionblog@everydayfiction.com.   All entries must be copy and pasted into the body of the email. No attachments will be opened.
4. There is no entry fee.
5. You may enter as many 3 separate and different stories up to 250-words each. 
6. All stories must contain at least four words from the String of 10.  Any stories without at least four words from the string of 10 will be disregarded.  The prompt words may be slightly modified such as tense, number, etc.  (Example: walk can be amended to walks, walked, even walker or walkers)
7. The aphorism that is given doesn’t not need to be found in the story, but rather to be used as an additional source of inspiration.  No story will be judged on its use.  Note may be taken if a story uses the aphorism in an inspired way.
8. What matters most is your story, not the prompt words or quotation.  Seamless integration of any four of the prompt words is the goal. 
9. All entries must be in English, original, unpublished, and not submitted or accepted elsewhere at the time of submission. Flash Fiction Chronicles/Every Day Fiction/Every Day Publishing reserves one-time publication rights to the 1st- through-3rd winning entries to be published at Every Day Fiction and Flash Fiction Chronicles.
10. Entries must be received via email by 11:59 PDT Sunday, February 14.
11. Winners will be notified by March 20.  Publication will follow in April. 
12. The preliminary decision the judges of the top 10 and the final decision by guest judge, Joel Willans, of the top three stories are final.

 Stories from the first String-of-10 Contest can be read at these links.

 1^st Place: The Haircut by Sharon E. Trotter

2^nd Place: The Forever Summer by Mary J. Daley

3^rd Place: Choices Made by Jim O’Loughlin

PRIZES

1st Place: Winner will have his or her story published at Every Day Fiction in April 1010 and be paid the standard payment of $3.00 per story.   A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles  will also be awarded as well as an “I Write Every Day” t-shirt.

2nd and 3rd Place: Winners will have their stories published at Flash Fiction Chronicles in April.  (NOTE:There is no payment for publication at Flash Fiction Chronicles.)  A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, the editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles  will also be awarded to both 2nd and 3rd place winners.

 ABOUT JOEL WILLANS

Originally from Suffolk in the UK, Joel Willans has lived in Canada, Finland and Peru. A copywriter and travel blogger, he now gallivants between East Anglia, Helsinki and Spain. Joel’s stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and published in more than a dozen anthologies and many magazines. In 2008, he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and won the Yeovil Prize and Global Short Story Award. “By ma biscuit or kiss ma fish”, his short story collection, is currently shortlisted for the Scott Prize, while his flash fiction can be found at places like Prick-of-the Spindle, Pank, Word Riot and Boston Literary Magazine. His story “One Bright Moment” is Every Day Fiction’s most popular story of all time.

Secrets escape acute adorations, escape attack from the critical masses by nature of being hidden. When someone mentions SECRET concerning another’s interests, ears attune toward the sound of the one speaking, and syllables are licked from the air as if they were ice cream.

In today’s world, we have books for DUMMIES, how-to books and authors expunging themselves of secrets that supposedly made them billions of dollars.  The bestselling Bible Code reveals secret codes in—you guessed it—the Bible.  Self-help gurus attune the individual’s consciousness to his inner-nature through secrets of Eastern gurus now finally revealed for the FIRST TIME!

Secrets linger in courtyards, whispers of political intrigues and veiled threats spoken from seats of power.  They empower innuendo that cannot be understood by the masses teeming with ignorance, such as the Freemasonry symbols used in some of author Dan Brown’s works, until the spell of ignorance is broken by the solving of riddles—riddles that reveal secrets.

There have been how-to books concerning writing as well, works that promise to reveal the tips and tricks (secrets) to those willing to purchase them.  Most are good self-help modules to improve one’s writing, and some are quite excellent.  However, the catalyst for “writing secrets” often comes through writing groups based in the internet; one unknown writer reveals something he found on a blog, which is turn revealed to his group.  Someone within his group becomes excited and reveals that secret to another writing group she belongs to based in the UK, and pretty soon the SECRET starts to lose some of its secrecy.

This is where I come in.  I have a large private web office where secrets are often shouted from the rooftops.  Within my private office linger lots of editors concerned with promoting their publications and seeking quality writers, as well as those who wish to improve their own writing, both editors and writers alike.  Often, someone posts something of interest to the craft of storytelling.  More often than not, there are little snippets within what is presented—secrets, if you will—that go without comment.

I’m going to reveal one of those snippets based on an outline that swept through my private office and out again, with nary anyone commenting or saying a word.  Graeme Renolds is the writer who supplied the blueprint, snatched from another writer who received it from another… and through the grapevine it comes.  Graeme is a fantastic writer, astute and always willing to learn and evolve in his craft, which is how he came across the outline.  I believe he altered the outline somewhat with some modifications.

Here is that outline:

Story Flow Blueprint

Step 1: Characters, conflict, and major story goal are introduced
At the very beginning of your story, the characters, the opposition/conflict, and
the overall goal of the tale are introduced.
Step 2: Characters begin their journey
The characters will begin consciously or unconsciously making preparations for the “journey” or adventure that they will be undergoing throughout the tale. A deeper sense of their abilities and motivations is given to the reader during this section, a means of letting the reader “get to know them” better.
Step 3: First goal is determined
The characters make a decision to take some action relative to helping them reach the story goal. That goal is identified for the reader, as are the reasons behind it.
Step 4: Actions are taken to reach that goal
The characters take some action designed to bring them closer to the goal outlined in the previous step.
Step 5: Characters are prevented from reaching their first goal
The first goal is thwarted, either through the actions of the opposition or some other circumstances that are not under the characters’ control.
Step 6: Characters react
The characters react to the fact that they failed to reach their goal.
Step 7: Stakes are raised
The stakes the characters are facing if they do not reach the story goal are raised, which in turn raises the tension and excitement of the story for the reader.
This is also where the characters react to the raising of the stakes.
Step 8: A new (second) goal is developed
Determined not to let one set-back prevent them from reaching their goal, the characters develop a new, larger goal (since the stakes are now higher).
Step 9: Actions are taken to reach the second goal
The characters take some action designed to bring them closer to the goal outlined in the previous step.
Step 10: Characters are prevented from reaching their second goal
The second goal is thwarted, again either through the actions of the opposition or some other circumstances that are not under the characters’ control.
Step 11: Characters react
The characters react to the fact that they failed to reach their goal for the second time.
Step 12: Stakes are raised
The stakes become even higher, with greater consequences in the event of failure. The characters react to this change.
Step 13: Low period begins
At this point the characters are feeling their failures. They are demoralized and uncertain just what to do next. Some may even be on the verge of giving up. It is only the high stakes that keep them in the game now.
Step 14: Third goal is developed
With uncertainty and confusion running rampant, the characters try to rally and push onward. A new goal is developed, though this time the specter of failure
looms close at hand.
Step 15: Actions are taken despite uncertainty
Determined not to give up without a fight, the characters push through and attempt to reach the goal one more time, despite the fact that their chances of success look slimmer by the minute.
Step 16: Dark time begins
The characters fail miserably and the terrible circumstances they have been trying to avoid seem all too likely.
Step 17: Characters react to the dark time
Despair sets in as the characters reach their lowest emotional point in the story.
Everything they feared is about to come to pass and they seem to be completely out of options. The stakes are at a fever pitch by this point.
Step 18: Pivotal change occurs
A crucial event takes place that makes the character’s all too well aware that they don’t have the option of failing. Maybe their lives are on the line. Maybe it is the life of
a loved one or the fate of the entire world. Whatever it is, the characters must face it and decide that they have to give it a go or die trying.
Step 19: Goals are revised one last time
For the last time, the characters set a goal and go for it with all they’ve got. They are at their limit, not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well. This is the
point of no return.
Step 20: Final showdown happens, the opposition is defeated and the characters
react to their success
The characters face off against the opposition and this they succeed. The opposition is defeated and they are left to figure out just where to go from here.

One thing that is most interesting is that this blueprint is built for plot, and it creates stories entirely too long for flash fiction.  In fact, by itself this blueprint is 743 words.  I used it experimentally once shooting for 5,000 words, and I soared to 7,000 words (with the way I love description).  With that in mind, what good is this blueprint for flash fiction?

Well, breaking it down into smaller patterns is beneficial.  Removing steps can shorten it up.  But why would a writer of flash fiction want to do that?

One concept I found from this blueprint that swept through my office—and was forgotten about rather quickly—are the failures disclosed to the protagonist’s accomplishing of his/her goals.  Particularly, Step 5, Step 10, Step 16 and Step 20 reveal the secret I’m referring to, and that is one of failure. Writers are well versed with the concept of failure, often calling it rejection—although every bestselling novelist has had stories rejected including Stephen King.  The most beloved heroes often fail repeatedly before procuring their goals.  Some even fail at the story’s end, as did Mel Gibson’s historical character in Braveheart. The world (readers) are well acquainted with failure, and when they read about a character who fails as many times as they do, AND THEN SUCCEEDS, they tend to identify more with that character.

But this blueprint is already 743 words.  How could a writer of flash fiction utilize it?

One way is to get right to the action.  Editors are always saying how they want stories that begin with the action. But what if an astute writer began not only with the action, but with the mentioning of two or three previous failures as well?  What if the writer began with a character… say, at an abandoned castle surrounded by werewolves?  The writer could use some back-story to fill the reader in on the previous failure of the character trying to lead his village to safety from the growing werewolves.  After setting out on a two-day journey for the safety of a nearby citadel, the village is destroyed (a failure).  A new goal emerges.  Now the character must protect those who still survive: his family.  The stakes are raised because he loves his family, thus the drama intensifies.  He fails.  Now, alone, he is in the castle ruins, a very dark time in his life indeed.

Here come the werewolves.

Do you feel this sudden shift in intensity?  Just briefly mentioning the past two failures (secrets snatched from this blueprint), the story intensifies and, perhaps, we can use more dramatic language at this point: Behold now the iron will of the nefarious agents of abominable intent. See how negative the distraught hero embraces his doom.  Yet somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears his children’s voices saying, “Daddy, don’t give up,” and he remembers lessons he taught his children.  As howls fill the air and jaws snap at his heels, the hero races up the castle to the bell tower of the desolate abbey still attached.  After slamming a heavy oak door and barring it, he gazes at the vast sky because the roof is gone, recently collapsed.  Only his sword and an rusted iron bell hangs and—an idea!

Our hero rings the bell by beating it with his bloodied sword.  It creates a sad sound, a dull noise, but the more he beats it the more rust falls away; the outer casing comes off like crumbling armor.  Beneath the veneer of rust gleams solid metal, and now the sound rings pure and loud: CLANG, CLANG, CLANG! The werewolves cannot stand the tolling of the bell, and the hero rings the bell until morning, weeping the entire time, until the sun’s rays drive away the evil.

Failure is a tool to increase tension for your characters and readers, a secret for writers of both flash fiction and novels.  And it came as a nugget of truth buried within the blueprint listed here.  What other secrets lie in the blueprint above?  What secrets do you have regarding writing?

Please comment and reveal your writing secrets!

Liquid-Imagination

Silver Pen

American Zoetrope (where my private web office, Liquid Imagination, resides)

Silver Blade (sister publication of Liquid Imagination)

John “JAM” Arthur Miller owns Liquid Imagination Publishing, an ezine combining artwork and music with speculative fiction and poetry to create a new art form. JAM has over 65 publishing credits/acceptances with various publications ranging from anthologies, print publications and ezines. He is on the Board of Trustees at Silver Pen, a non-profit organization created to promote literacy.  JAM has full physical custody of three small children who have tamed his writing and slowed him down somewhat, and that’s just fine with JAM. The importance of optimism combined with the occasional YIPPIE (regardless of rejection) for writers is a frame of mind that, JAM believes, must be attained for optimum performance. “YIPPIE!!!”

It was like this for weeks, no months, on end. This disquiet of something not there. This feeling of disruption… Even as my daily routine continued, a heart that paced length to length in its serrated Boney cage…

Old relationships are hard to break; harder still to fall in love again, when you have loved that other so much, so long. But I knew I had to move on, had to love again, truly, with all my heart again. Otherwise the writing would not come. That thought killed me every night. So I began the process even before the first night of stepping in. I jerked my heart, almost squeezing it in my fist every time it turned back for another last look.

I don’t blame my heart, especially now that it has grown quite old and quite tame – there was a time when I reveled in every movement – an odd thing in a wife and mother, a woman most of all, for aren’t women supposed to be the rooted ones?

I loved it every time we moved, each time taking our home with us, dismantled and packed into neat cardboard boxes transported by truck or ship. This time too was no different. Except that we moved from one steep end of the city to another steeper extreme. This time we were closer to the sea, more away from the hub, among broader quieter avenues and cul-de-sacs, roads and lanes that were and still are strangers to me.

It’s magical that a single city can be so different in its different parts and yet be the same city, like a confluence where the waters of disparate rivers meet. But, I had grown to love my old locality and home of four years. Despite the obvious beauty of this new place, I have not yet been able to claim it for my own. As yet. I needed to own it first; the writing would not happen otherwise.
I needed to sit at a particular angle, where the sun slanted in just so. So my computer was turned around and around again; and yes the husband was exasperated. And I am still in the process of finding my G-spot of writing, so to speak.

My blog lay neglected. My implicit commitments to writers were not honoured. Drafts of poems remained in paper napkin scraps and margins of magazines. Stories raged in my head and died before they could be consecrated to paper. It did not help that for the most part, the past year had been emotionally unbearably noisy and jagged – a bad thing for my writing self anyway. Very bad. But now a new year has already begun. Now I am disciplining my heart to love again, and love true, like before…

It helps that the moon when it’s plump and full, hangs just above the Gul Mohar tree outside my terrace (and in this house I have two – one above running the length and breadth of our apartment and the other smaller but more reachable beyond my hall) shedding elfin light upon us. There are parrots and squirrels here too. And a gang of monkeys that seem to be more decently behaved than those in my children’s school. Most homes own a dog or two; I watch them and sometimes get to make friends with them. The dog I once rescued and owned briefly, but will love eternally, lives about five hundred metres away. I saw him recently and came away glad for him.

Yes. The bricks are falling into place, softly. The fire hasn’t yet warmed my hearth, but it is lit now. I can feel my heart expanding, ready to embrace this new environment. This year I hope my muse will rain. This year I hope to finally fall in love with my new surroundings, make a new beginning, deeply and meaningfully.

Adapted from a post at  Writers & Writerisms by Rumjhum Biswas.

Rumjhum Biswas is still living in Chennai, India, but in another part where there were no mosquitoes until the rains came and all the incy wincy spiders were washed away. No she isn’t implying that spiders eat mosquitoes, but if they did she’d become a millionaire by breeding spiders and selling them all over the world, instead of being another poor writer who gets to answer the door and the phone because she is at home and that means she has a cushy life! She has a blog, Writers & Writerisms, to prove that it’s not. You can also find her at times right here at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

Never shy about giving people the benefit of her opinion (whether it was asked for or not) my old gran was always telling someone their ‘but’ was too big.

On the face of it, that seems a little rude, even for my old gran, but she wasn’t talking about pants’ sizes. She was referring to those built-in excuses we like to keep handy, in case our sub-conscious starts prompting us to chase our dreams.

“But I’m too young/too old.”

“But he/she’s out of my league.”

“But people might laugh at me.” [Not a problem if your dream is to do standup comedy]

Writers’ buts.

Writers too, have built-in ‘buts’ as it were:

“I’d love to write, but I just don’t have the time.”

“I’d love to write, but I don’t know anything about grammar.”

“I’d love to write, but there’s no writing group where I live.”

If you ask me, none of those ‘buts’ matter. They’re all just a way of avoiding the real problem, the biggest ‘but’ of them all:

“But I might fail.”

The fear of failure can stop a person from even trying. Have you ever almost pitched a story to a high-paying magazine, almost sat down to write a novel, or almost entered a writing contest? If so, then join the club. I imagine just about every writer has had that experience at some point or other.

I’ll bet there are thousands of great (or potentially great) storytellers out there who’ll never get published. I suspect for most, it’s because they let their ‘but’ get between themselves and the chance of success. You’ve probably met some of them.

Be wary of such people. Many of them carry a virus, Excusitis, a mental affliction which can kill writing dreams by causing the person suffering from it to doubt themselves and their ability. Symptoms include excessive use of the phrases like ‘I wanted to be a writer, but…’, ‘I’ve always thought I had a book in me, but…’, ‘I love writing, but…’

While not always contagious, many sufferers become bitter, unable to wish other folks success in endeavors which they themselves once dreamed of pursuing. Instead of support they offer mockery, instead of encouragement they try to plant seeds of doubt in your head.

Avoid these people at all costs or risk becoming infected yourself.

So what’s the difference between writers who go on to achieve their writing dream and those who don’t?
I don’t believe it’s talent – though it would be naïve to think that talent isn’t a vital part of the equation.

It certainly isn’t luck – that’s just a silly excuse used by folks who think there’s an easy path to success.

I believe the difference is simple.

Successful writers refuse to allow their ‘buts’ to get in the way. They see a ‘but’ as an obstacle which must be overcome rather than an excuse to quit… at least that’s what I’m hoping.

Me, I’m nearer fifty than forty; between leaving school at sixteen (with a poor academic record) and my 42nd birthday, I’d never written a word of fiction. Believe me, I could come up with a dozen more great excuses. The point is who cares? I figure all those things will just make my ‘How I done it’ story a little more interesting if and when I become successful as a writer.

How about you?

What ‘buts’ have you put behind you as you chase your writing dream?

This post was originally published at http://jongibbs.livejournal.com/68015.html. 

Jon Gibbs is an active member of both The Garden State Horror Writers and The Monmouth Creative Writing Group .  His story “Wild West Justice” will appear in The Best of Every Day Fiction Two coming out this month. He can usually be found hunched over the laptop in his kitchen. One day he hopes to figure out how to switch it on. 

When in college, I was required for a humanities course to read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, her collection of essays about women and writing. At the time, my goal was simply to finish the book before the test, and so years later, I haven’t retained much of what she wrote. The one thing that has stuck with me is her thesis:

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Her room is not so much an actual place as it is a metaphor for privacy. Stephen King gives similar advice in On Writing, although he doesn’t limit it to just the ladies and is more literal on the room part. He says to be a writer, you must have a room, and the room must have a door, and you must have the determination to shut the door.

That all sounded fine, but I didn’t take it seriously. I work in a newsroom, where at any given time, five conversations are going on near my desk, in addition to reporters on the phone, the police scanner, a football game on the television and the never-ending clicks of fingers on keyboards. Peace and quiet is for sissies, I thought.

That changed 18 months ago when I decided to write fiction in earnest.

To start with, I needed a computer, and the only one at my house was in the family room. The kids mostly used it for playing games and surfing the Internet, so the first difficulty I encountered was getting any time on it at all. And when I did, I had to deal with the myriad distractions that come with writing in the same room with three kids, my husband, the dog, and the television. I love my family and enjoy spending time with them, but family time and writing time mix about as well as oil and water. I kept trying to make it work though. I persevered for months amid the family room circus. Then the computer crashed. Permanently.

So I started writing at the office instead. At times, when there were no articles to edit and my colleagues were checking e-mail or posting on Facebook, I was pounding away at my latest short story. The approach was only marginally doable. It narrowed my writing time to five minutes here, ten minutes there. It was like setting a faucet to drip and trying to fill a glass.

Then at Christmas came a godsend: I received a generous amount of money, and there was no question in my mind what to spend it on. I researched the options for a few days and bought my first laptop.

Now every night after I get home from work, I take my laptop to my bedroom and close the door. I shut out the television shows and movies, video games, music, the dog who thinks he’s attention-starved, family members who want to talk about their day, the toddler who wants to “help” me hit the keys, the rumbling dishwasher and the tumbling clothes dryer. I shut it all out, and I write. I turn on the metaphorical faucet full blast and watch the words spill out on the screen. It’s beautiful.

In 1929, Virginia Woolf said a writer needs a room of her own.

Eight-one years later, here is my room: It’s a screen 14” wide, backed up by 3 GB of memory and a decent word-processing program, and I can take it with me anywhere. Along with my imagination, a thick skin, and a whole lot of determination, it’s all this woman needs to be a writer.

This piece originally appeared Jan. 2 on Jennifer’s blog.

Jennifer Campbell-Hicks lives in Arvada, Colorado, where she tries to find time to write in between her two full-time jobs as a journalist and mother of three. Her short story “Cowboy Jake and the Moon Men” will be appearing in the upcoming issue of Science Fiction Trails.

I have a writing colleague who has a theory that all this flash fiction stuff is distracting writers from producing more substantial work. I can see his point – I think – but I’d like to point out that there is a flipside to this. Let me explain.

I’ve always had a problem with writing long stories. I’m not entirely sure what the problem is: whether it’s a short attention span, commitment phobia or simple laziness. But it essentially boils down to the fact that I’m comfortable in a number of fairly well-defined word-count ranges: 140 characters (for tweets), around 250 words (microfiction), 800 words (flash), 1200 words (two-act short) or 2400 words (three-act short). Almost everything I have ever written fits into one of those slots.

This has meant that I’ve never managed to write anything remotely full-length without grinding to a halt a couple of thousand words in. But a couple of years or so ago I had an idea – one that I thought really had legs – and I really, really wanted to write it. So I put together a prologue of around 900 words (within that flash ballpark) and I thought it set the story up nicely. But that still left the problem of what to do about the novel itself – and once more I was stuck.

The answer came to me when I was watching a DVD of the excellent BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House”. The revelation of this production (scripted by the great Andrew Davies) was to treat the story essentially as a soap opera, with rapid cutting between several interlinked storylines. And I realised that I could make use of this approach myself, by structuring my book as a sequence of short, snappy, flash-length self-contained episodes – say five to a chapter. This also tied in nicely to some advice I’d been given by another writer friend of mine, Kate Allen, that you should always try to set up at least five plot strands in the opening chapter of a novel.

And that unlocked the problem: I now saw the book as a series of flashes, interleaving with each other along a broad story arc. So I began writing, and it fairly zipped along. It looked good. I was happy. Unfortunately, however, at this point an entirely different problem asserted itself, a problem that may become obvious when I reveal the title of my book – “Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens” – and explain the high concept behind it – essentially a sequel to “Pride and Prejudice” with added extra-terrestrials. My big idea suddenly looked as if it was being overtaken. By zombies.

Now if I had finished the complete book a year or so ago, I would have been laughing all the way to the bank. But I hadn’t, and it was clear that by the time the book was anywhere near finished it would still look as if it was another wannabe Austen mash-up that was arriving particularly late to the party. So I stopped writing and turned my attention back to writing short stories, flashes and even the occasional poem.

But good ideas don’t go away, and I still desperately wanted to get my story read. And one day towards the end of last year Dickens came to my rescue again. I suddenly remembered that he used to serialise his novels first before they were published. Could I do the same? I already had a blog that was gathering a decent-sized readership, and I had a reasonable following as @jonpinnock on Twitter. I reckoned that I might just have a big enough internet footprint to get critical mass if I set up “Mrs Darcy …” on its own web site, running one of the flash-length episodes twice a week.

So I bought http://www.mrsdarcyvsthealiens.com and registered the Twitter account @RealMrsDarcy. @MrsDarcy had been grabbed already and in any case I think that @RealMrsDarcy has more of a celeb feel to it. I also felt it needed an attention-grabbing picture to go with it, so I tried my hand at a bit of vaguely steampunk artwork. I showed this to my colleagues in my local writers’ group and one of them, Dave Weaver, immediately came back, without prompting, with the vastly improved version that you can see here.

Thus it was that on December 19th, 2009, I published the prologue to “Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens”, thus launching the project onto an unsuspecting world. Unbelievably, I didn’t realise until just before I did this how significant the date was: December 19th is Jane Austen’s birthday. If ever I believed in fate …

I have no idea how successful this venture is going to be, but for the moment it scarcely matters. The important thing is that it’s out there and that people are reading it and (apparently) enjoying it. The next challenge is to increase the size of that readership – which is, of course, largely what this post is all about. So the best way to finish is of course to give you a link to “Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens”: hope you enjoy it!

Jonathan Pinnock was born in Bedfordshire, and – despite having so far visited over forty other countries – has failed to relocate any further away than the next-door and equally unexceptional county of Hertfordshire. He is married with two children, several cats and a 1961 Ami Continental jukebox. His work has won several prizes, shortlistings and longlistings, and he has been published in such diverse publications as Litro, Every Day Fiction and Necrotic Tissue. His unimaginatively-titled yet moderately interesting website may be found at www.jonathanpinnock.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @jonpinnock.

I am an unpaid writer.  Recently on the Everydayfiction.com forum someone asked the question ‘When do we get our stripes?’ wondering when a writer can considered themselves a Writer (note the capital or this could get messy).

The old standby answer is fairly well known. If you haven’t read Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke then you have probably heard Whoopi Goldberg quote her in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit:

A fellow used to write to him and say:

“I want to be a writer, please read my stuff.”

And Rilke says to this guy:

“Don’t ask me about being a writer. If, when you wake up in the morning you can think of nothing but writing…then you’re a writer.”

A writer is a person who ‘has’ to write. That’s seems to satisfy me and I think most people would agree. But what about the social status? What about the great status of ‘Writer’ that all us ‘young’ aspiring writers wish to own?

I tried to answer this question by saying a writer is someone who is published regularly, and paid for it. I honestly think this fits with what most people assume about a Writer. However I think that the fairly recent increase in non-paying, easily accessed markets in the form of non-paying eZines (web based magazines) has changed how important this is.

But I think I need to add a few points onto my definition before I say why.

1. Regular might be irregular

The nature of the publishing and writing game is that a lot of people don’t get a story out every 2 weeks, some only manage a small one every 2 years, others write books every month or so.

2. You have to find the right pair of eyes, at the right time.

Getting published isn’t just a matter of getting the thing written. In fact I’ve heard it said that publishing is a numbers game. The more you send, and the more people you send them to, the better your chances.

It might seem like a spaghetti approach (throw it and see what sticks to the wall) and that’s because it is.

I don’t mean that artistic struggle or passion isn’t alive and well, but no mater how artistic we all still are in the modern world if you’re not wiling to throw you best work around like soggy pasta then you’re going to struggle. Unless you’re really good, or lucky, or both.

3. Oh and it also has to be good.

Yes, this comes third; you wouldn’t think so would you.  Good is obviously a subjective thing. But that’s a whole different can of worms I might open another time, but not now.

As I said at the beginning, I am an unpaid author. But that doesn’t make me an unpublished one.

I have had three acceptances recently, the first from Yellow Mama (long dark horror fiction), the second from The Short Humor Site (not surprisingly a short humor piece) and the third, (another short humor piece to be published on January the 8th) by The Dew on the Kudzu.

I am grateful and happy to have been published, and accepted, by all three.

I think this type of market gives us ‘mere’ unpaid writers a chance to test ourselves against paid Writers. Salt our wounds, grow some confidence and know that here, at least, the same pair of eyes thought our story was, (heck I’ll say it), as good as a Writers. But it’s important to see the number of writers with paying credits on these sites.

In all the debate about online publishing I think this is the point that I like the most: the story is more important than the name under it.

Because these new, early, non-paying and easy to submit to eZines exist people who may not have ‘earned their stripes’ are putting stories next to ones written by those who have. If it’s a good enough story, it can stand a chance!

Does that make me a Writer? Probably not, ask me when I know what getting paid feels like I guess. But I think it suggests that the question, in terms of getting published has changed direction. In other words the question now seems to be not ‘are you a Writer?’ but ‘is it a Story.’

While my story sitting next to these Writers’ stories on a web page might not make me a Writer, anymore then sitting next to an fruit tree holding a Granny Smith makes me an apple tree, it does make me feel hopeful. After all, if you pick an apple off the ground, it’s still an apple.

A Version of this article was original posted on my personal blog: Mostly Unsure

Sources:

Quote from Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit taken from http://www.script-o-rama.com .

Peter Howard lives in Kentucky, USA. He divides his time between writing a lot and bugging the hell out of his wife and son. He has a story due to appear at The Dew on the Kudzu on January 8th. He is originally from England.