bwheadshot2Any writing we do is an opportunity to grow as a writer. From the largest and most complex project to a dashed-off blog post, the act of putting words on paper (or on the screen) can and should be a learning experience. Every story, article, novel, or essay we write works in subtle ways to build those mental muscles that make us better, faster, and stronger writers over time. However, real growth comes from stepping outside of our comfort zone, of addressing new challenges and setting new goals for ourselves, and of doing things with words that we have never done before.

Enter the humble flash fiction story — your perfect crash course in expanding your horizons.

Flash fiction affords a unique opportunity for just this kind of stepping out and doing something different. The advice may be as old as the hills — writers have forever been saying that short pieces of free-writing, character sketches, writing-prompt challenges, and other assorted short short work are great ways to work out new techniques, explore untested ideas, or just cut loose with raw experimentation — the difference is that now such work stands a real chance of being published.

That’s not to say, of course, that just any old tosh adds up to a publishable piece of flash, but that is to say that much of those exercises that were once private bits of amorphous self-reflection, textual doodles as it were, can now be converted into something far better. Something far more effective in honing a writer’s skills precisely because, with application, these projects can be viewed as potentially publishable.

Why that is important — hugely so, as a matter of fact — has less to do with all the wonderful other opportunities flash affords like expanding your web presence and having your work read by more people, and more with how it can make you better, for writing towards publication is always a superior test of a writer’s skills than private, consequence-free scribbling. To publish a piece of fiction one has to craft a real story out of that character sketch or errant idea for a scene, and writing such a story to completion  and putting it in front of the world is the best way to grow as a writer.

Which means, ultimately, you can deny yourself the freedom to be lazy in your writing. It’s easy enough to try to work something out privately, it’s another thing entirely to do it in front of a roomful of strangers. Treating your experiemental, outlandish, and incedental ideas as potential fare for public consumption means you run the risk of falling on your face — precisely the most exhilirating and rewarding experience a writer can have.

Bill Ward is, most probably, a figment of his own imagination. His flash has appeared at Every Day Fiction, Murky Depths, and the anthologies Dead Souls and Northern Haunts, as well as The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008. He blogs about all things genre at www.billwardwriter.com.