Flash Fiction Chronicles

by Milo James Fowler 

Some said it couldn’t be done.

Some said we’d end up sacrificing quality for quantity.

52 short stories written and submitted in 52 weeks? Were we crazy to think it was possible?

Ray Bradbury did it, and for years he’s encouraged others to do the same:

“If you can write one short story a week – doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing. At the end of the year, you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done.”

But I’m no Bradbury.

I knew that going into Write1Sub1. At the time, I had only 5 stories published and a growing mound of rejection letters. I was a full-time teacher. How would I manage to write, edit, and submit a story every week and hope for an editor’s second glance? Was I out of my freakin’ mind?

If so, I was in good company.

Over the course of Write1Sub1Year1, we had more than 150 writers join up, and by year’s end, over 40 of our participants saw more than 500 of their short stories and poems published by over 140 different markets! 15 of my own short stories found homes last year, and two of them were with markets I’d wanted to break into for a while: Daily Science Fiction and Shimmer.

None of this would have happened without Write1Sub1.

The challenge kept us writing and submitting consistently, and the community of supportive writers kept us inspired throughout all the rejections, revisions, and resubmissions. In the process, we grew as writers, and our writing improved immensely. I guess there’s something to be said for practice.

“I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true: hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice.”  - Ray Bradbury

But here’s the best part: Write1Sub1 isn’t over. In some ways, we’ve just begun.

Stop by Write1Sub1 today and join over 200 writers dedicated to honing our craft. We have a weekly (52 stories a year) and a monthly (12 stories a year) participation level, and it’s never too late to join.

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 Milo James Fowler is a junior high English teacher by day and a writer by night. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer, and Macmillan’s Criminal Element. In his spare time, he collects rejection letters. Stop by anytime: http://www.milo-inmediasres.com/

By Stephanie Allen Crist

We all need readers.  When our work is published, we get a share of the readers available.  When those readers enjoy our work, they spread the word.  This creates buzz.  That buzz helps grow our audience and helps strengthen the audience of the ‘zine that published our work.  A strong ‘zine is going to stay in business to publish more of our work.

Clearly, buzz is a writer’s friend.  Knowing that, you should also know that a writer can release his or her own bees to generate a bit of buzz.

Creating buzz sounds difficult, but it’s really not—at least not in small increments.  You start by having a presence on social media sites.  Facebook, Twitter and Google + are great places to generate buzz.  Provide a link to your work if it’s online, to the ‘zine if it’s not, and let people know you’ve got a new story in the marketplace.  Include a small portion of your story, maybe a sentence or two, to lure readers in.  Encourage your friends—your busy bees—to talk about your work, to share your links, and to “Like” or “+1” or “Retweet” your posts.

This little bit of effort can generate buzz for your stories and for the ‘zines that publish you.  You can’t control how far the buzz spreads or how many bees choose to participate, but you can get things started.  If your work is good and you reach the right readers, you’ll find the buzz growing faster than you expected.

But don’t stop there.  When you have a new piece published, announce it on your blog.  Build something fresh into your announcement, such as a hint of how you got the idea or the details of your writing process, and encourage people to share your post.  If you offer more than the story itself, you’re likely to generate more interest than if you’re just plugging your work.

You can create buzz with each new story you write, but social media isn’t just for new work.  Whether old or new, creative works can “trend.”  You can build a trend by driving traffic to old works or a struggling ‘zine.  By creating buzz that is less reliant on being timely, you can have a more lasting impact.  Again, offer more than just the work or the ‘zine itself.  Add something to it to make it fresh and let people know why it still matters.

With a little bit of effort, you can release your bees and generate buzz for your work and the ‘zines that publish you.  In turn, you’ll have a bigger, more committed share of readers and a stronger publication that’s interested in your work.

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Stephanie Allen Crist is a freelance writer with phantasmal aspirations of fantastic proportions, with a few attainable ones thrown in just for sport.  Her flash fiction has appeared in Everyday Fiction, Antipodean SF, and Anotherealm.  You can learn more about her work—and links to her social media sites and blogs—at www.StephanieAllenCrist.com.

For the week of February 12 through February 18, Flash Fiction Chronicles is  having its fourth String-of-10 Contest—String-of-10 FOUR—for the best 250-word story written from a specific prompt: a series of ten words posted at this site on February 12, 2012.  

This year’s Guest Judge will be Robert Swartwood.

Here’s what Robert calls his “Short and Sweet Third-Person Bio.”

Robert Swartwood was born in 1981. His work has appeared in such venues as The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, Postscripts, ChiZine, Space and Time,Wigleaf, and PANK. He is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, which was chosen by The Nervous Breakdown as one of their favorite books of 2010, and was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. For a more in-depth and up-close view of what Robert does, check out his website, Occasional News, Insights, Rants, and Other Miscellaneous Stuff.

PRIZES STRING-OF-TEN FOUR FLASH FICTION CONTEST

1st Place: Winner will have his or her story published at Every Day Fiction in April, 2012 and be paid the standard payment of $3.00 per story.   But this year we are upping the ante, a $50  Cash Prize from Flash Fiction Chronicles to the first place winner. A copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction Four along with a copy of Pomegranate Stories by Gay Degani, editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles will also be awarded as well as an “I Write Every Day” t-shirt. As a special bonus this year, Robert has decided to throw in a copy of his own collection of  (very) short fiction, Phantom Energy.

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

GUIDELINES in Brief

1. The prompt for String-of-10 Four will be available at 12:01 on Sunday, February 12, 2012 here at FFC.
2. There is no entry fee.
3. Submit stories up to 250 words.
4. Enter up to two stories per author.
5. All stories must contain at least four words from the String-of-10.
6. Seamless integration of any four of the prompt words is the goal.
7. Entries must be received by 11:59 PDT Saturday, February 18.
8. Winners will be notified sometime in March 2012.  Publications will follow in April.

PRACTICE WRITING FLASH STORIES EVERY DAY USING PROMPTS FROM FLASH FICTION CHRONICLES DAILY PROMPT AT THE FFC FACEBOOK PAGE HERE.

Stories from the third String-of-10 Contest

1^st Place—Pretending by A. S. Andrews

2^nd Place—Today She Will Write Cool Things by Romit Berger

3^rd Place—Wingless by Karolyn Reddy

 

Stories from the second String-of-10 Contest

1^st Place—Salvation by Ann Pino

2^nd Place—Gypsy Flour by John Towler

3^rd Place—Good Morning Susan by Brittany Soder

Stories from the first String-of-10 Contest

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

by Jim Harrington

Markets Added

• Writer Advice (750, quarterly) publishes fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction
• Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette (200-700, varies) open to all genre

Interviews Added

• 50 to 1 (50, varies) publishes stories around 50 words and 1st lines
• A-Minor Magazine (500, weekly) publishes dark fiction

Resource Added

• The Review Review (under Publishing & Promotion) — in-depth reviews of magazines, writing articles, and more

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Jim Harrington discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For. . . blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” He’s also the Markets Editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles’ Flash Markets Page. You can read his stories on his blog. He can be contacted at jpharrin [at] gmail [dot] com.

by Rumjhum Biswas

Angel Zapata, a Georgia-based dad of four active young boys, is still growing up! That is not surprising, given his many interests and occupations; it’s obvious that the man isn’t really trying! Angel spent the first thirty years of his life “bouncing back and forth between Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan” before moving to Georgia where he “fell madly in love with a spunky Georgia peach and married her.”

Angel has been writing fiction and poetry since he was fifteen, for around twenty-five years, but in between he’s had an amazing range of occupations. He holds a science degree and is a nationally certified paramedic graduate. He’s worked in a stockroom, answered phones, and been an outdoor parking garage attendant, installed burglar alarms, spent ten years as an advertising account executive, volunteered as an emergency medical technician and worked on an assembly line building tractors.

Currently, Angel works as a quality technician for an agricultural company. His interests include collecting comic, pulp magazines, and mass market paperback originals, and,  in his own words, “I still don’t know what I wanna be when I grow up!” Meanwhile, Angel has written and been published. Some of his fiction and poetry has appeared in The Boston Literary Review, Long Live the New Flesh,  The Flash Fiction Offensive, and Nailpolish Stories.  He runs and edits a magazine called 5X5, a  magazine that revels in stories succinctly told.  He is a contributing author of four collections of short fiction, The Best of Everyday Fiction II, Branded Words,  Mausoleum Memoirs and Toe Tags and  two of poetry, Collaboration of the Dead Presents Putrid Poetry & Sickening Sketches Vol 2 and The Best of Everyday Poets One.

Angel Zapata likes dark tales; stories that bite. As one of his readers ( L Miller) wrote in a review of the Trestle Press short story horror series, The Man of Shadows, “Angel spins tales of gothic darkness and contemporary horror with equal skill.” Angel also likes his stories to be bite-sized. Five lines being his favourite length. Think of a zombie that nibbles off pieces from your head and you’ll come pretty close to the kind of stories that gets Angel excited.

Visit Angel’s blog, A Rage of Angel and 5×5 Fiction for more on Angel.

Rumjhum Biswas: You seem to have a missionary zeal about “skillfully shortening the short story.” Is there a story in this?

Angel Zapata: I definitely believe in the power of very short fiction. Simply put, I think we’re living in the age of the short-short story. Everything in our lives is getting faster, shorter, smaller… more convenient. Technology, in a lot of ways, is slowly replacing the “novel length” mode of communication.

People now are quick to tweet or Facebook their statuses; short and sweet. I think this type of condensed communication has spilled into how much we’re willing to read. Getting to the point and eliminating superfluous words has become the norm. In essence, flash fiction is this age of technology’s natural evolution. Interest by readers, writers, and editors is only going to increase in the coming decades. And I want to be a part of it.

And for clarification, I’m not advocating we shun novels nor am I saying you can have the same richness of scene or character development in six words that you can have in 5,000. But the immediate impact felt by the reader can be equally as effective. Successful short fiction is like screaming “Fire!” in a crowded room. People won’t need an incentive or a back-story to react.

RB: When did you first discover that this form is what challenges you? Any anecdotes from your student/younger days?

AZ: I was writing flash fiction long before I knew what it was. In high school, there were always writing assignments with minimum word counts—say, ten pages or so—which I always felt were unnecessary. I figured why write more when less can oftentimes read more. I was constantly snipping away at words in order to perfect them. I loved how a three-word sentence could sometimes generate more force than an entire paragraph. Anyway, I got D’s in most of my classes.

College was far better for me. I had a great time in my creative writing classes. I had a supportive instructor, Mark Wisniewski, an accomplished, contemporary novelist and poet. He pushed me to edit my work and strip it down to its simplest and most provocative form.

RB: Who were the short story (as in really short) writers that you loved from the time before “flash fiction was discovered/became famous,” and why?

AZ: The earliest short-short stories— and technically they don’t qualify as flash fiction— I can recall reading were from H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Both Lovecraft’s “Dagon” and Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” clock in at about 2,000 words apiece, but they pack such an incredible punch. There’s more story in these two tales than in some novels I’ve read. I wasn’t familiar with “Flash Fiction,” the term, until I started reading small press journals back in the 90’s.

One book I stumbled upon in a thrift store about twenty years ago— it cost me about fifty cents— was Open Windows. It was a collection of short-short stories by Canadian flash fiction writers. It’s edited by Kent Thompson and was published back in the late 80’s. The stories were incredible. I had never read such stunning fiction, and the average length of each story was somewhere around 200 words. I was in awe. All I could think of was, “Hey, this is the type of fiction I write.” It helped me to realize there were other writers out there doing the same thing.

RB: Apart from Hemingway’s classic six word story, what are the other tiny stories that inspired you? Tell us about them.

AZ: Four years ago, when I sat down and decided to really dedicate myself to the writing craft, I was reading heaps of flash fiction online. Some of it was decent, some good, and some very good. One author who wowed the hell out of me was Thomas Wiloch. I stumbled into his work, “Good Samaritan” on Microhorror.com and was blown away. It was surreal, magical, succinct, beautiful, and complete. And it was only about 150 words. I think his work opened up something new in me. Two months later I was submitting my own work to publications. I intended to send Mr. Wiloch a ‘thank you for the inspiration’ e-mail when I learned of his death. He had passed away just weeks earlier. His work has left a lasting impression.

RB: What is your favourite genre in short stories and why?

AZ: I lean more toward the speculative genres, especially those containing horror. I love the idea of terrifying, disturbing, and freaking out the reader in so very few words. It’s probably the same joy people experience sneaking up on someone and yelling, “Boo!”

I also think that true ‘horror’ in stories is the most universally experienced emotion of all the creative writing elements. Most of us have never or will ever travel to the moon, slay warriors on the battlefield, hunt dinosaurs, or be knighted. But each of us has or will experience some form of horror in our lifetime. We can all relate to it.

RB: Which genre, according to you, is best suited for stories that are this concise? Is there any such genre?

AZ: That’s a tough one to call. When flash or micro fiction is done well, the genre is inconsequential. Success can be found for literary and speculative fiction writers alike and is based solely on the talent and creative ability of the writer.

RB: Have you thought of working on a variety of genres for five word and five line stories? Or a dribble? Drabble?

AZ: I created 5×5 Fiction to be as rigid in form as a Shakespearean sonnet; never wavering and always with purpose. Each tale is twenty-five words told in five sentences of five words each. And there are no genres that are off-limits to this form.

Over the years, I’ve experimented and written pieces in a multitude of forms. Everything from 6-word stories, Twit lit (Twitter stories of less than 140 characters), dribbles (stories told in exactly 50 words), drabbles (stories told in exactly 100 words), six sentence, ten sentence, 200-word, 500-word (micro-fiction), and 1,000-word (flash fiction) pieces.

They each pose their own unique challenges and, when done with expertise, are capable of exciting the mind and heart like nothing else in
this world.

RB: Tell us about your reading habits. Do you read more online? And what do you read these days, apart from submissions to 5X5?

AZ: I’m swallowing words all day and all night long. On coffee and lunch breaks during my day job, I read daily online e-zines and journals like Every Day Fiction, Every Day Poets, Flashes in the Dark, MicroHorror, The Flash Fiction Offensive, and dozens more. In the evenings after dinner, I tend to either read novels in print or off my Kindle, plus a healthy dose of comics, magazines, anthologies, and reference books.

Some of my very recent reads (and re-reads) include the first three books of Paul D. Brazill’s Drunk on the Moon series, Cult Magazines: A-Z, Carlito’s Way by Edwin Torres, X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe, the poetry collection Cow’sleap by Tom Smith, Criminal Macabre by Steve Niles, and the short story collection Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by the legendary Richard Matheson.

RB: Do you think that online readers prefer certain genres over others, as in more horror, fantasy, crime fiction etc. than literary, romance, historical etc.?

AZ: Yes, I do. And genre-specific flash fiction online magazines like The New Flesh (weird/bizarro), A Twist of Noir (crime/noir), 365 Tomorrows (sci-fi), and Flashes in the Dark (horror) are testament to that. The good news is that there are new online magazines popping up on the internet every day, so they’ll never be a shortage of work for readers to enjoy in any genre.

RB: Tell us what you think is the future of the short-short story, and where will its readers be? Tell us your vision (or fantasy) about tomorrow’s quick-bite readers.

AZ: If the attention span of my own children is indicative of children on the whole, then I definitely see a need for flash fiction in elementary and high schools. Educational focus seems to be primarily on reading novels and more traditional length short stories. It’s not until college that most young adults—to my knowledge—are even aware of flash fiction’s existence. Teaching our children to respect, read, and write the short-short story will ensure its longevity and its inherent progression. I believe it will also help many children better adapt to this era’s modes of communication and will challenge them in completely fresh ways.

RB: Where would you like to take 5X5? Tell us about your dreams about this magazine.

AZ: I’d like to put together a ‘best of’ print issue in the near future. I’ll also be looking at submission calls for specific theme issues and acquiring guest editors. I’m most looking forward to where the individual writers will take the form. I really want to see 5×5’s submitted to other online and print magazines. And I want to one day see 5×5 as a recognized short-short form alongside dribbles and drabbles.

RB: What are you working on these days? (If it’s okay with you to share, many writers don’t like talking about their future projects).

AZ: I’m (slowly) working on a werewolf novella that may eventually be part of series. And I’m in the midst of two literary flash pieces and a ghost story about a missing exorcist.

I’m also finishing up a poetry chapbook called An Offering of Ink and Feathers. It’s a collection of personal/confessional pieces from my childhood, with themes on marriage and the writing life.

At this time, there’s no undertaking a novel in my immediate future.

RB: Give us a day in your writing life?

AZ: In a word: chaos. I write on my phone, my galaxy tab, post-its; everything. I wish I could say I have the perfect environment in a room dedicated to creating the next best-seller, but I don’t. Neither do I have a favorite room, desk, or recliner to create my work. I take many notes throughout the day and then tap furiously away whenever I can, usually super early in the am or super late in the pm.

I’m a husband and have four sons— three of which are under twelve years old— so I stay active.

RB: What is your favourite haunt when you want to write? And beverage?

AZ: In general, the desk crammed in the dark corner of my bedroom acts as base of operation.

My exclusive beverage of choice is strawberry-flavored sparkling water. Ah, such tasty goodness. If I could bathe in it I would. Beer’s good too. For drinking, not bathing.

RB: Would you like to mention any current favourite authors who write really short fiction? Including your contemporaries?

AZ: These days, most of the short fiction I read is from my online and small press contemporaries. My Kindle is jam-packed with flash fiction anthologies and collections. It allows me to stay current and discover any new variations of the form.

Writers who I feel actively churn out quality flash fiction in a myriad of genres are Erin Cole, Chris Allinotte, Lily Childs, Laura Eno, Oonah V. Joslin, Jodi MacArthur, Michael J. Solender, and Nicole Monaghan.

RB: Any pithy words of advice on the short-short form for writers?

AZ: Okay, maybe not pithy, but…

Too many writers fear the restraint (myself included) of completing a story in so very few words. They let that fear override the voice of their muse. My advisement is for writers to tell their stories in as many words as it takes to complete it. THEN, condense it to fit the form you require; be it 1,000 or 25 words. Practice it. Try shortening, refining stories you have laying around on your desktop or have previously published.

We writers are often hesitant to ‘chop’ any of what we deem to be a perfect string of words. We consider our works as babies, so severing away any part of it seems an almost monstrous act. Writers need to begin to think of editing as more of a ‘grooming’ and less of a ‘maiming’.  Invoking the baby analogy, refining words from a manuscript should be likened more to the trimming of hair or clipping of
fingernails and not the loss of a limb or a beheading.

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Rumjhum Biswas lives her writing life at the edge of the sun toasted city of Chennai, in a corner where migratory birds cruise the sky above the din of a burgeoning IT hub and an ancient temple dips its toes into a not so ancient pond. You can also find her at Writers & Writerisms and the Polyphagous Poltergeist; the latter more occasionally.

Has anyone ever handed you a sheet of paper and you immediately notice how beautiful the handwriting is? You look up and smile at the writer of those graceful “G’s,” “E’s,” and “D’s,” and mutter, “Nice writing.”  Then you start to read.  And yes, it IS nice handwriting, but you can’t figure out what the writer is trying to say.  Lovely, but indecipherable.

This happens in that other kind of writing we do, in our storytelling.  We lay down beautiful words, one after the other, and when we read the sentence, the paragraph, the whole 1000 words of flash out loud, we think the rhythm and the ring of the words sound just right.  As the story’s creator, we know what we’re saying and we don’t realize that behind all those carefully-wrought phrases the reader may find a knotty tangle of logic and sense.  I contend that as writers we have a responsibility to strive toward clarity and coherence in our writing whether we use traditional or non-traditional forms.

I read once that “complexity” and “complication” are not the same thing, even though we often see them used as synonyms.*   We want our stories to be complex with characters who have deep character and lives that reveal the pain and joy of existence.

In other words, we want characters who are forced to make difficult decisions not only between GOOD and EVIL, but between the better good and the lesser good, between the skinned-knee bad and heart-break evil: not the stuff of melodrama and comic book heroes, but rather the painful choices human beings must make every day.  We want stories that result in loss, wisdom, gain, and battle scars.

Complicated stories, for my purpose here at least, are often a result of being “writing drunk” and I don’t mean the writer’s finished off a bottle of Makers, but rather she or he is drunk from the process of creating, that a writer’s brain can become pickled with our characters, the events of our tale, and most often with the sound of our own words.

This occurs when a writer reads over what he’s worked so hard to produce and isn’t certain what the gut of  the story is.  This is when a writer may decide to keep beautiful language because it seems to make sense, and well, it’s effing beautiful.  I do this too. I never discard anything I like until I’ve made up my mind what the story is about, but then I make my reluctant self become Alexander with the Gordian knot, whap! because a writer owes his readers style, language, complex characters and stories, but also clarity and coherence.

Making sense doesn’t necessarily mean telling the reader everything in straight-forward subject-verb sentences.  Reading a story that is “on the nose” often feels as if the writer doesn’t respect or appreciate his readers.  Instead of being told THE meaning of a story, most readers want SOME meaning to unfold in a subtle, surprising, satisfying way.

Readers want allusion, they want illusion,and they want the thrill of that moment when they “get” it. They want complexity and they are willing to deal with focused reading. Think The Hours, Middlesex, House of Sand and Fog. These books are masterfully written and when an author’s evidence begins to come together for the reader, there should be a lightening bolt of delight.  But most readers do not want complications that come out of nowhere,  have set-ups that never pay-off, have characters that change their behavior half way through for no apparent reason.  A story benefits from sound logic, a loose plan, and a desire by the writer to communicate something that reveals to the reader something about humanity.

Clear, complex, and coherent stories earn their readers whether they are traditional or non-traditional pieces. Even the most densely-written pieces (Middlesex) have their rewards because the writer masterfully leads the reader there.  I’m not sure that it’s the writer’s responsibility to make sure every reader “gets”  it.  However, it is the writer’s responsibility to determine what it is he’s trying to do with his writing and to use all his or her skills to achieve that goal.

While a writer cannot always guarantee that every reader will get his story or the point of his story, it is his responsibility to make sure he has spent time and effort to figure out what he’s trying to achieve and then more time and effort trying to achieve it. This means rewriting and editing until some sliver of meaning is clear to the writer. That sliver of meaning may not be what the reader takes away from a story, but the work that the author puts into the piece will allow the reader to take away his own meaning.

That said, let me just add, “You can’t please all the people all of the time, but you can please some of the people some of the time.”

________________________________

Gay Degani has published in journals and anthologies including three The Best of Every Day Fiction editions and her own collection, Pomegranate Stories. Nominated for a Pushcart, she has been a finalist or short listed at Glimmer Train and The Fish Anthology and won a first place at Women on Writing’s Quarterly Flash Fiction contest. She edits EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles and blogs at Words in Place where a list of her online fiction can be found.

* My guess is the “where I read this” was in Robert McKee’s Story.

by Jim Harrington

Every week, Richard Osgood, moderator of The Flash Factory (a private office hosted at Zoetrope.com), posts the Sunday Five-to-Fifty (or Fifty-Five) challenge. The premise is simple. Richard posts five randomly selected words, and the members write 50 or 55 word stories using the prompt words. Below is my response to this week’s post. The prompt words are in bold.

***

A mother. A father. Triplet girls. An apartment better suited for a dollhouse. Worn linen dresses. Shoes with holes. No job. Unemployment. An eviction notice hanging on the door. Little food for their empty bowls.

Still. Jokes. Laughter. Promises and dreams of better days. Songs sung for Auld Lang Syne.

***

This is an exercise anyone can do. Just grab your dictionary, select words from random pages, and get writing.

______________________

Jim Harrington discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For. . . blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” He’s also the Markets Editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles’ Flash Markets Page. You can read his stories on his blog. He can be contacted at jpharrin [at] gmail [dot] com.