“Flash” Fiction and Nonfiction: The Brilliant Capturing of a Moment
This week as guest editor for SheWrites, I want to explore a subject that is close to my heart: “flash” fiction and nonfiction. My blog, 20 Minutes a Day at lenleatherwood.wordpress.com, contains my own contributions to “flash” in the areas of fiction, memoir, essay and poetry, along with interesting articles I’ve found on the subject. But you may be wondering what is “flash” and why you would ever want to write it?
“Flash” goes by other names: short-shorts, postcard, quick, sudden, micro, mini, mini-story, etc. and refers to pieces that range from only a few words to no more than 1500.
Ernest Hemingway is often credited with a six word “flash” story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn, but he is certainly not the only famous author who enjoyed this brief writing form. Ovid, Anton Chekhov, Franz Kafka all wrote “short,” along with O. Henry, John Updike, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Sandra Cisneros, to name only a few. The gist: brevity carries power.
“But what does this have to do with me?” you might ask. “I’m in the middle of writing a bona fide short story or longer yet, a memoir or novel. Why should I care about this short form of writing?” The answer comes in three words: discipline, satisfaction, and publication. “Flash” hones your editing skills, yields satisfying results, and offers publication possibilities.
Over the course of this week, we will talk to Tara Masih, the editor of The Rose Metal Field Guide to Flash Fiction, and Dinty W. Moore, the editor of the upcoming The Rose Metal Field Guild to Flash Nonfiction in order to look in greater depth at what “flash” encompasses, how one goes about writing it, and where to send those little gems for potential publication. You can learn more about The Rose Metal Press at rosemetalpress.com. Come along for the ride. It’s fun, it’s unexpected, and it’ll be over as quick as a flash.
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