Here is a catalogue of posts from this past week.

How to Inspire the Muse by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

Creative flashes are similar to flash fiction, both take you for a brief foray to another place. I like to use them to change my mindset and achieve a different focus for a short time. I read voraciously but I can sometimes find that reading-for-inspiration can lead to reading-as-work-avoidance and in extreme cases, reading-all-day-long.   More…

Writing Short by Michael Ehart

As always, the story is the thing. The best flash carries with it all the things that make any other story work, a beginning, middle and end, a protagonist who changes or makes their surrounding change in a meaningful way, strong dialog, vivid description, and some sort of payoff for the reader. It can be difficult to shoe-horn all of these elements into such a small word-count, but good flash fiction stories generally do.  More…

Getting Published by DJ Barber

There is no race. Take your time. Make it neat. Follow the Guidelines. Write something every day. Join and participate in a writing group. Get feedback. Give feedback. Read books of genres you write. Try to write in some genre you haven’t before—you might surprise yourself. And don’t be shy—write what you love, hone it, perfect it. And when it’s ready, submit it!!!  More…

Excuses, Excuses by Erin Kinch

Writing as a hobby isn’t a bad thing. Tons of people do it. But I want something more. And if I want that something more, then I have to banish the excuse monster and his whispers about laundry, returning phone calls, and surfing the Internet, and get writing.

 

Of course, even still, the odds are against me. There are way more aspiring authors/novelists out there than those that get published every year. But, to quote one of my favorite movies, “Your odds go up when you file an application.”  More…

Thoughts on Dialogue-Only Flash Fiction by Jordan Lapp

The biggest reason for rejection? Both voices sound the same. With dialogue-only stories, you’re basically saying as a writer that you’re so good at writing dialogue that you don’t need all that mundane stuff like description, setting, and plot. You can do it all in the spoken word. Well, if you can’t even make two character sound different from each other, you’re in trouble.  More…