Flash Fiction Chronicles

Ever notice how much writing advice there is floating around out there?  Well here are some of the most common ones I’ve heard and my take on them.

Advice: Writing is re-writing.

“I don’t write, I rewrite, that’s when all the fun begins. I just get it all out in the first draft, then I spend countless hours going back and editing, editing, editing.”

Okay, revision is important. But do we really just need to throw caution to the wind when do our first drafts? I contend that, especially with flash, the answer is no. I think those hours editing, editing, editing would be far better spent studying dramatic structure, successful stories we admire, or even just day dreaming. You put good stuff in, good stuff will come out. Overworking a flash piece can ruin it by the second pass. Too much revision is far worse than not enough.

Suggestion: If it doesn’t work set it aside for a while, a couple of months. Let the ideas percolate, then rewrite it from memory.

Advice: Keep a notebook for ideas.

“I keep a little notebook that I carry everywhere and record every stray thought that pops into my head. It’s a rich goldmine of ideas.”

Yeah, I’m sure it is a rich goldmine of random ideas. But good fiction is not made out of random thoughts. Yes, you might put a seed for a good idea in there sometime.  Yes, it might turn into a story for you. My line of thought on this advice is that if the idea is not good enough to stick in your head, it’s probably not all that great of an idea. If you aren’t obsessed with the idea, it’s not worth writing about. Flash is short and sweet, most of us are quite capable of rendering the whole thing in our heads.

Suggestion: Most authors I know do keep some kind of idea file on their computer usually just a one liner or a title. There is nothing wrong with this, per se, but again, if you can’t keep the idea in your head long enough to sit down and file it, it probably is not worth saving.

Advice: Write everyday, form a habit.

“I get up every morning at the crack of dawn, and write four pages.  If not, evil gremlins will come and eat my brains!”

Would be nice to have that kind of motivation, right? Unfortunately it is impossible to do this for most people. I think most of us writing flash are not professional writers and have jobs and families, and complex ‘real-life’  lives to attend to.  One of the fun things about writing flash is it doesn’t require long term commitment. Why not dash out a flash when you have a few minutes? No need to feel guilty that you can’t always find the time.

Suggestion: To be efficient with your time, combine daydreaming with a strong understanding of the craft of fiction. It’s often easier to fit in a few minutes reading up on writing advice than to produce a draft. Better that you do something towards developing your skills than nothing. Read, develop the story in your head, watch people (your kids, coworkers, etc) for details that might be useful. Anything.

Advice: Author’s should always get paid for their work.

“I only submit to top tier magazines that pay pro rates.”

Get published much? Probably not. The fact is there are a 1000 writers who are worse than you who are getting published. And there are a 1000 writers better than you waiting in line for their slots. Writers should get paid for their work, but keep in mind that flash is a close cousin to poetry, traditionally not a very lucrative venture. Most flash ezines need the money more than you do. Most flash ezines are labors of love with the editors paying out of their pockets.

Suggestion: Donate cash payments back to the ezine or some where like Duotrope these are the places that are keeping the scene alive. They are developing the audience for you. Think of your donated flashes as advertisements for your longer works (you are writing a novel aren’t you? Or will someday.) Creating ‘branding’ for your fiction has a long term value that exceeds the professional rates. We new writers have a vested interest in keeping the scene alive, right? (Obviously I’m not saying one should never submit to top tier magazines, just that not every story you write will be top tier.)

Advice: Writing is magical, mystical and hard.

“Every word I write is gut-wrenching agony, exposing my soul to the world.”

Right. This is the worst of the lot. I’ve often thought, I must be doing this wrong. I’ve never been miserable writing;  if so I wouldn’t do it. There are some stages I like more than others, of course. But if writing is a painful experience at any level, for god-sakes, go take up needlepoint or something. Writing is a craft; writing can be used to illustrate complex philosophy, existential woe, or something as simple as a lost pet that is found. Writing is like wood working, model ship building, or painting. It takes practice and determination. If it is causing you to suffer, go do something else; the world has enough writers. Flash is a bad place to try to unleash your angst and misery, not enough room for that sort of thing.

Suggestion: Write for fun; write for yourself; write from the heart, but most of all, write your best. If you’ve done your best then you’ve succeeded. Develop your craft; develop yourself as a human being, but where the two overlap is thin and fragile and can easily wreck an otherwise perfectly good story.

Advice: Bosley has a clue, listen to him.

“Bosley Gravel is a writing genius and with his dozens of published short stories and a forthcoming novel The Movie from BeWrite Books slated for pre-Christmas release), he must know almost everything there is to know about writing.”

Ahem, while I appreciate the flattery–what a load. If there were to be a Number One Rule about writing, it would be that there are no rules.

Suggestion: Do what works for you. Trust your instincts. That’s not to say ignore all advice you get because you know best. Lots of editors and writers will offer you perfectly good advice and lots of them will not ‘get’ your writing and make some very odd suggestions. Your job is to separate the two.

Knowing what advice to take and when to trust your own instincts can be hard and confusing sometimes, but becoming an expert in any field is difficult. The bottom line is that writing is an act of individualism. Only you can write your stories and only you can make them perfect. If some advice doesn’t suit you, ignore it. It’s allowed, and I’ll even suggest it for the best. Keeps things interesting.

Don’t agree?  Want to fight about it?   Post a comment and tell us your take on these or any other bits of advice you’ve heard.

Bosley Gravel, eclectic hack writer, was born in the Midwest, and came of age in Texas and southern New Mexico. He writes in a variety of genres. His fiction focuses on the absurdly tragic, and the tragically absurd. He likes good black coffee, nightmares, Billie Holiday, and that hour just before the sun comes up. Visit his site for links to his fiction, and contact information.

Coming soon: his debut literary novel The Movie from BeWrite Books (for pre-Christmas Release).

NOTE:  This is an encore presentation of Jason’s post on execution. 

I’m an idea guy.

If you’re working on a story and you write yourself into a hole, I can help you get out of it. If you have two acts down on paper but don’t know how to close it out, I can help you write a strong finale. Even if you don’t know what to do, don’t know how to start, and are questioning your place in this universe, I can help talk you through it. That’s because I’m an editor – an idea guy.

I’d like to be an execution guy.

I’d like to be the one that takes my ideas and forms them into my own books. It’s hard for an idea guy to become an execution guy, though. We just have too many ideas. I’ll sit down to start working on something, realize it’s really not what I want to work on, and start on something else instead. At the end of the year I look back on my creative output and I have a couple of projects I edited and twenty writing projects that are stuck on page one.

So I came up with a way for an idea guy to become an execution guy. I like to call it Flashing Fast.

The idea is pretty simple: Throw yourself into everything. Throw yourself into legal thrillers and wuxia and occult stories and medieval fantasy. Throw yourself into eBay listings and sex columns and hallmark cards and resignation letters. Throw yourself into the first person and the second person and third person and tap a line deep into your stream of consciousness. Throw yourself into 260 ideas in a single year, focus on a different genre or form or perspective each time, write the stories as you plot them, and commit them to the world.

I’m Flashing Fast right now. I’ve thrown myself into 25 different stories so far and I have 235 to go. I’m posting them to my blog every Monday through Friday for a full year. And, as an added challenge, every story is in someway inspired by the first one (although I have been using the term “loose interpretation” a  lot).

I started with a memoir, so that I can literally throw myself into the other 259 stories. I moved on to a space opera. I followed that up with an obituary. I rounded out the first week with a slasher and a to-do list. Week two was jidaigeki, steampunk, dieselpunk, cyberpunk, and biopunk. On week three I focused on form and restructured the original memoir as a crossword puzzle, excel spreadsheet, twitter feed, classified document, and PostSecret postcard. In week four I tried to emulate famous authors and posted a Chuck Palahniuk-inspired chapter, an (admittedly) horrible e.e.cummings-inspired poem, a David Mamet-inspired one-act, a (purposely) horrible Stephanie Meyer-inspired short story, and a Free Republic-style wingnut piece. And for week five I did western horror, disaster thriller, hardboiled detective, “atonal” prose, and libertarian science fiction pieces.

With the exception of western horror, memoir, and twitter, it was my first time working in any of those genres. None of the stories are perfect, some of them are horrible. But that’s ok because all I’m doing is planting seeds right now. I’m not committing to anything. I’m generating ideas one day at a time. I’m Flashing Fast. And, by doing this, I’m figuring out what stories I actually want to build into something bigger.

I already started building one story, in fact. Artist Marco Magallanes, read my jidaigeki and dieselpunk stories and asked if I wanted to do collaborate on a comic book with a similar feel. The idea has evolved a bit from the original (moved back 1000 years and shifted from Japan to China, for instance) but we’re already several pages into a Shaolin political thriller with a strong sci-fi component. And I love it. And I’m committed to it.

I’m executing.

And while I’m testing the waters I’m also learning a lot about storytelling. With the exception of the occasional article or editorial, most of my experience has been in comics and graphic novels. By dissecting a story and continuously rebuilding it, I’m learning how to write effective prose. I’m settling into a style and learning how to paint a picture when someone’s not actually painting a picture.

So, in other words, I’m learning how to execute.

It’s been a great experience so far, one that I encourage others to try. Just remember – you’re not trying to write you magnum opus in flash fiction form. You’re just trying to find an idea and a style you’re comfortable with. You can dedicate an hour each day to a project like this. Set the timer and go, post whatever you have when the buzzer goes off. In future posts I’ll talk about my own process some more. The researching and the time commitments and the feedback I’ve received to-date.

Until then, I’m urging you all to jump in with me. Share a link to your Flashing Fast page in the comments. Give feedback on each other’s work. Come up with 260 ideas, play with them, take the ones you like the best, and then build them into bigger stories. For one hour a day, take yourself out of your comfort zone and execute.

You’ll be surprised by what turns you on.

Jason Rodriguez is an Eisner and Harvey-nominated editor and writer living in Arlington, VA. He recently edited Elk’s Run and Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened (both from Villard Books, a division of Random House). Besides several new comic projects, Jason is publishing his flashes fast and in a variety of forms and genres over on his website: http://www.jasonrodriguez.com

The piece of art pictured below by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller was commissioned by Modern Art Oxford and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. 5,000 books glued together as bricks to make a house you can step inside. The smell inside is wonderful, of starch and paper. But I wanted to take it apart and READ.

I recently wrote four pieces of short fiction, to a deadline. I’d pledged to write three pieces within three hours. All four stories were written to prompts provided by a writer’s forum. The prompts were excellent, thought-provoking and meaty. The forum was pledged to write a total of 100 stories within two days and it achieved that target. Each story was posted anonymously and then commented on by the other writers. For each story you posted you had to comment on at least three stories by others. Great discipline, because reading is a vital part of writing and critting hones skills like nothing else.

The process worked very well, smooth and seamless. It was the first time I’d taken part in a challenge at this particular forum, which includes some stellar writers, and I’ll admit I was nervous. But once I’d pledged to take part, I relaxed that part of my brain where I keep a tight lid on the voices that are always bubbling under waiting for me to pay attention to the stories they want to tell. I let three voices rise to the surface and let these three check the prompt lists until they found something that suited. Then I wrote. The fourth voice came direct from the prompt itself which was of course how I was meant to approach the whole exercise.

It was interesting to see how other writers critiqued the stories, not just mine but everyone’s. These are serious writers, many of them award-winning. They had serious comments to make about the stories posted at the forum. What interested me most was a tendency to read the stories not as tales being told to them but as tales they would have told differently. They read, in other words, as writers rather than readers. I went back and checked my own critiques. I did the same. We were nearly all of us reading in this way, seeing a story we would like to tell and nudging the author in that direction. This is not to say that the comments weren’t useful and constructive. They absolutely were. But I made a mental note to put my writer’s hat aside and read as a reader, keeping my own ego out of it. (I mean ego in the true sense rather than as vanity, although god knows I suffered some serious pen-envy reading some of those stories!)

All in all, a great day’s work. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing, the reading and the taking part. I highly recommend the exercise, to writers everyone, especially those seeking to hone flash fiction skills. 

Sarah Hilary is a frequent contributor to Every Day Fiction  (Lolita’s Lynch Mob is an all-time favorite) and on other flash sites around the web.  Check out her blog, Crawl Space, where she lists all her online writing and then check out her other brilliant FLASHES of fiction.  Pick Ugly, was one of the Commended entries to the Leaf Books Nano Fiction Contest 2009, and will be published in their anthology.