Flash Fiction

I finally submitted my first flash fiction. I had been working on it for the past two weeks. My original goal was to give myself a week to write and polish the flash piece, but a stomach bug had other ideas and derailed my momentum.

I never thought I’d be interested in flash fiction. To be honest, I didn’t really know what existed out there in the world of flash. Once I started exploring, I became intrigued and thought it might be a great way to get my writing out there in the universe.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the experience (although I have no idea whether or not the flash story will be accepted). Two things I learned:

1) How important it is to be “economical” with your words. I feel like the experience writing this 1000 word-or-less flash piece helped me improve as a writer. Now I’m looking at words in my regular novel with extra concern.

2) It’s nice to write short flash pieces, something you can finish from beginning to end in a week, while you are busy revising and editing your novel. I got so used to writing 1700+ words a day in order to finish my novel, and now that I’m not in the writing stage I worry I will lose the momentum of producing those words on a daily basis. Writing flash allows me to focus on my novel, but at the same time work on my chops.

I think I’ll definitely be writing flash again. In fact, I’m already outlining my next piece. I’ll be sure to share in the future.