Flash Fiction Chronicles

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.

I have been a writer my entire life. I made up stories before I could write. My sister and I would create the most amazing silliness out of the most mundane. I remember acting out skits that we learned from listening to comedy records and disc jockeys. After one particularly silly ‘for the family only’ performance, we slipped into a bit from the Wizard of Oz, linked arms and did the yellow brick road stutter step walk out of the dining room (our stage) singing the phrase “We’re off” over and over and over like a broken record caught in a endless loop. Not only were we telling our family that the improv show was over, but we were also fessing up that we knew were not the Ozzie and Harriet definition of normal. That was really something for kids our age to be aware of! I learned the lesson that creativity, and flash stories in particular, need to be about something not just about some things. Somehow I forgot that.

Writers get asked “where do you get your ideas.” Let me tell you that ideas are everywhere. I have a list of great ideas. Laundry lists of things that I could write about. Clever stuff. Original thoughts. Earth shattering “would you look at that” things. Just last night I had an idea about a guy who forgot that his vocal cords are not twenty years old anymore. But ideas are not stories.
For example, I had a clever thought back in the mid-90’s. It tied animal created paths to purpose built roads and then on to interstellar travel on not-so-original ‘warp lanes’. It was clever enough to make a few people chuckle. But that was all there was, and for most people the cleverness wasn’t enough. It was in all honesty very boring.

An idea, a thing, a clever turn of phrase alone can never be a good story. I don’t throw away these ideas. I keep them. They tumble around in my very quirky and very weird brain. They are still important ingredients for a story. They just lack something.

I kept that clever warp lane idea. One day it collided with another not-so-original clever idea that involved David Brin-ish intelligent Koala bears. Koala bears traveling up and down the warp lane tickled the silliness in me. But it wasn’t until I started thinking about why a sapient Koala would want to travel the warp lane that a story formed.

The ‘why’ gave me the something that the story needed. The something that knitted these clever and silly ideas together and gave them a reason to be told. Everyone, or so I think, experiences some form of prejudice. Mine was being a dirt poor kid growing up on a farm with poor dirt. My sister and I created stories for a reason. We were too poor to replace the television that had fried when a lightening bolt hit the antenna. Even if I had been popular, there wasn’t a lot of time to socialize. I had chores to do after school and on nearly every summer day. The garden wasn’t for a few fresh veggies to highlight an autumn feast, it fed us during the long winter. I was teased by my peers because my jeans had patches on them, my tennis shoes had plastic soles instead of rubber, and because my hand-me-down clothes didn’t fit well. I have listened to acquaintances talk of acts of prejudice that make my experiences diminish to nothing in comparison. But because of my experiences I had the hint of a hope that I could relate to the abuses they had endured. I cling to a lot of similar hints. They too are some things that can become part of a story.

It occurred to me that even a Koala rich enough to travel up and down the warp lane, no matter how smart or how dapper he may also be, would be considered uppity or someone to fear by others simply because he was different. Now that is something.
I typed out 95 words and The Journey was begun. I had a story.

But I didn’t recognize the lesson. I stumbled into a handful of other clever ideas that happened to get immersed in something that made them into stories. Prejudice is a common theme for me. One I really didn’t recognize fully until I had the clever idea for this post. But even this strong idea that resonates with so many people is still just a thing. Relating acts and effects of prejudice do not make a story. There has to be something; something more. It is a subtle distinction. Editors recognize it and sometimes even tell us that ’something’ is missing. I can’t define this ’something’ any better than with the examples I have given above. Maybe this is what people are really asking when they want to know where a writer’s ideas come from.

Here I am. It took me two full years of purposeful writing to remember a lesson I had learned as a child. A story has to be about something, not just about some things.

[reprinted from Blogtide Rising, the author's eclectic blog]

Deven D Atkinson is a computer programmer living in rural Southern Ohio.  For a new writer still learning the craft, he is doing quite well with publications at Every Day Fiction and Abandoned Towers.

There’s a knocking on the door that you must answer, but you are not ready to answer it. You have to put down those words circling your mind like a theme from a musical; you have to put them down immediately before they vanish. But your hands won’t move on the keyboard, because of the knocking. It must be him. You feel some relief even though you were not thinking of him, at least not with that part of your mind which always deals with the writing bug that burrowed into you with the urgency of a Japanese Bullet Train, when the children grew old enough to be sent (“packed off”, he’d said) to a boarding school. You release a long breath and get up without putting the words down.

The angry voice inside your mind reminds you that the words you ignored in order to answer the door will not return. No matter how hard you concentrate later, they will not return. The angry voice has a habit of triggering off a virtual tirade inside your head, aided by jagged pieces of memory that tell you again and again that nobody cares about your writing and your desire to be a much feted author; least of all him. You are after all just another housewife. Once upon a time you had a promising career; your upward mobility had been neck to neck with his; but that was before the babies arrived and you stepped indoors so he could soar outdoors. To be fair, he did his part by keeping you warm and up-to-date with all the latest gadgets, holiday destinations and smart-casual clothes. Nevertheless you cried often, acid tears stinging your heart.

It’s the usual story of syrupy sacrifice and martyrdom. You don’t feel special any more. Every rejection slip that drops into your inbox tells you how crowded the ocean is. Your only hope in a thousand is to get trawled up in a net among similar hundreds, to be served together in a blend of spices, consumed and then forgotten. You accepted this state of affairs years ago. But you have undying faith in your talent. You know you can do it; you know that you could have done it before. If only…

You savor the singed feeling that resentment produces inside you. It’s a flame fanned vigorously by the sense of martyrdom that has followed you like a faithful dog ever since your maternity sabbatical got stretched and stretched until it became voluntary superannuation. He knows how you feel.

He got a batch of visiting cards made, with your name and “Writer” written in sloping serif type below that, and your email and phone number and address on the reverse. You shrugged and put them away in a drawer. He bought you a pair of solitaires. You wore them. Then you told him flintily that you could have bought them yourself, if only… Later on you’d made up for it by cooking a good meal and doing nice things to him.

Sometimes, in moments of weakness, which have a habit of hitting you in the middle of a good day of writing, you feel like throwing your arms around him and telling him that he’s the best thing that happened to you and he must be patient. Oh, he must. He must, for the good day will surely arrive, and all his privations and yours too, will be gone forever. But today is not such a day. Your footsteps stamp your irritation on the floor, because you have to answer the door. And, the words are gone. He will notice your irritation and enter quietly. He will wash up and watch TV; later on he’ll ask you in a soft voice if you would like a drink before dinner, and depending on your answer, he will either fill two glasses or continue watching TV. There is buoyancy in your step as you visualize his face. You swing open the door.

There’s nobody there. You blink a couple of times in the late afternoon sunlight. You watch the watchman as he slowly ambles towards you. You hear him say in his creaky but patient voice that the courier boy didn’t wait because you took so long to open the door.

[Author’s note: This whimsical piece won honorable mention in The Verb Magazine’s “Looking at You Contest” and an excerpt was posted in the October 2007 issue of The Verb. It is pretty much my own story; one of those days when the writer within is angry!]

Rumjhum Biswas’s fiction and poetry have been published in all the five continents, in print as well as online journals and anthologies. She has won prizes for poetrry in India and was long listed in the Bridport Poetry Prize in 2006. She blogs at htt://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com

I have found that my own life experiences is the best source of material for me to draw from when I write. All of my short stories, to date are technically fiction, but they are heavily laced with real events and people from my past.

Right now, I am in the process of writing an essay that informs. When finished it is to be a minimum of 2,000 words. I am sure that all of you are well aware of how boring such a paper can end up being. . .and I did not want that. . .so I wanted to choose a subject that would be personal to me, knowing that in this way, I could give it a more human face. I chose Mnemonics (aka memory techniques). I am in college for the first time ever.

I will be 54 years of age this July 27th. The first thing I noticed when coming back to a formal education setting, was that it was taking me longer to learn new things. I was so stressed that I withdrew from two classes my first semester (Math and Biology) but, continued on with my English class. Talking to my advisor about the problem I was having was my saving grace, because I learned about these memory techniques. This semester I am taking a full load and maintaining a high G.P.A.

I am being published soon in two separate genres: a magazine called Trestle Creek Review, and an upcoming English book for use in college class rooms across the country. Both of the short submitted stories are fiction, but based on my own life experience.

Happy writing!

Margie Lott Chapman lives in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho with her husband, Bill. . .daughter & son-in-law, Wendy & Dave. . .two granddaughters, Brittany & Melissa, and numerous pets. She is a non-traditional student at NIC, majoring in English & working towards her bachelors. She has two of her short stories being published early next year, and looks forward to being accepted at Every Day Fiction, eventually, if and when she ever gets the hang of writing flash fiction. :~)