I have set myself the challenge of writing a flash for every day of 2009... and so far am ahead of schedule with 29 written. Some are very short (50 words) some are more. I have a love/hate relationship with flash fiction... I love doing them. It is like sketching, and all the freedom that goes with that, and it doesn't matter if the lines aren't quite right or if the sketch goes nowhere. But the process is always exciting and sometimes a fresh character is born or an idea begs for more attention.
I do not often enjoy reading flash fiction... find they can be a little unsatisfying, like a snack when what I want is a meal. I can appreciate the cleverness and the ideas and the language sometimes, but I am invariably left wanting more.
Some of my flashes have given birth to complete stories, and they would not have been without the process of 'sketching'. A couple are leaning towards being more than a short story... maybe a novel. And for me that is a big reason for flashing. It is a process that frees up my thinking, lets it run unhindered, and the places I go then are not the places I thought I would go... and they can be so amazing, those places.
So, I want to know, why do YOU flash?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Douglas, firstly, I am very impressed with your flash-a-day challenge, I think it's an excellent idea, because it is definitely true that the more you write, the less you are attached to any one piece and can view them with a more critical eye.
I must take issue with your comparison between "flash" and "complete stories"! I believe a flash story can be as complete as a longer piece, that length is not the issue. As with comparisons between novels and short stories, each must be taken on its own merits and relative to what it can be not what it isn't. A flash is something you read fast and so it is much more about the atmosphere created, about what isn't said, a microcosm of a short story. I have read the most astonishing flashes. Of course they don't satisfy a need for a longer read, in the same way that short stories don't satisfy the need to immerse in the world of the characters of a novel for weeks, or months.
Anyhow, sorry, I didn't mean to sound so serious :)
I write flash because I am now addicted to the feeling of writing a complete entity in one sitting, often in 20 minutes. I write flash because, as you say, the process is "flash" too, for some reason my critical voice is completely absent when I flash, I feel free to do bizarre things with language, with content, in a way I find much harder with longer stories that require revision over a much longer period. I very rarely revise a flash, I have never extended a flash into a longer story - in fact, I have turned "problematic" short stories into flashes, with great success! (Highly recommended).
I also have to say that much money can be earned from flash fiction in terms of competitions and the winnings per word. Another great reason to flash!
Tania,
thanks for popping by and for sharing your answers to my questiion. I bet there are as many answers to the question as there are writers of flash... I posted this precisely because I am ever in a quandry about flash... I can read a collection of shorter fiction in a sitting (time and an absence of interruption permitting)... but a collection of flash fiction I cannot...
I do love the process, as I said, and for the same reason you give. I even love some (no where near all) of the flashes I produce. Flashing takes me into areas I would otherwise not have gone and voices are found there that would not have spoken to me through the process of story writing. And just sometimes the process throws up for me something bigger,,, and I wonder then if my inability to read flash after flash after flash, in the way that I read stories, was connected to this sense that flashes are often bigger than the number of words that makes them up. And I want all the words.
I have read some flashes that I do love, in the way that I love some poetry... some of your pieces for example... but I find that reading four or five on the trot leaves me feeling that the form is something insufficient.
I write flash as an addiction now, as a way of freeing up my thinking, and a way of getting out of my head some of the buzzing of so many stories. I can see how they could also be lucrative and penny for word more than many short story competitions. I will continue to flash... but for me they are more often than not sketches... and only sometimes complete in themselves and satisfying.
Would be good to hear others' thinking on this... because I realise that I am not speaking for anyone other than myself.
Best
D
I wonder if the issue is partly the quality of the flashes read, and also the speed at which they are consumed? Robert Shapard advocates taking flash fiction slowly, like poetry or sex (my analogy, this last!)... to give the stories a chance to work their magic.
and if you are left wanting more, then that is surely a good thing??
Thanks for popping by and responding to this post, V... I fully expected that you would on your return.
You might be right about the quality... there is a great variation in the quality of what gets put 'out there'.
As to the wanting more being a good thing... for some my experience is not that I want more of the writer's work, but that there isn't enough in the bite I have been given... like looking forward to a snack and unwrapping it and finding it is much smaller than the wrapper promised, and after the one two bites, it is gone and you are left unsatisfied.
I guess someone, some publisher/editor, needs to put together a collection of the very best there is, only the absolute best... maybe that is what is missing. And yes, maybe flash fiction needs to be approached like poetry is approached. It could very well be my approach.
(notice, V, your analogy is to do with sex and taking it slow... mine is to do with eating and eating too quickly to satisfy the hunger... so maybe a difference in approach to reading flash is all that is the problem here - my problem, that is)
Still pondering.
Hi Douglas
Just popped by via Greyling Bay.
I find that some ideas are clearly flash-sized, while others call out for 2000 words and others a whole novel. I prefer (reading and writing) longer forms, but a story has its own natural length, give or take, and a really successful flash should be as satisfying as a longer read. But I do agree that you can’t take too many at one sitting. Compared to the three course meal of a novel, maybe a short story is more like a continental chocolate; the first is divine, the second almost as good, but any more will probably be a mistake!
AliB
Thanks for popping by AliB. And for commenting on the question I raised.
I do sort of agree with what you have said. I love doing flash. Have done 60 so far this year. It is like working out, but just for the creative part of my brain... wish working out for the rest of me was so easy!!
I think that my concern, or part of it, is that this being a relatively new form - or at least one that is now being taken up by a greater and greater numbers of writers, the quality is so variable. A quirky idea is often enough to get a thing published, and to be honest it's not enough for me.
Of the 60 I have produced, I will send out fewer than 15... cos what I put out there, I want to be good... or as good as I can do. It's not about amassing hits for me, it's about telling enough of a story that it is complete and satisfies... or about the qulaity of the telling, that it sparkles in its words and surprises and delights.
But give me a full story any day of the week...
And this week, I turned an old and loved flash into a better and fuller and more satisfyingly complete story. It's like the idea was good enough to be explored and given a proper space in the world.
Anyway, good to have your tuppenceworth thrown in here. I will now go and hunt out your pieces on Greyling (have read them all already, but without attaching names to pieces).
Thanks again.
Best
D
Yes, yes, and yes to all the comments here about flash fiction. It's a form that needs to be recognised for what it is, rather than treated as a throwaway thing that's not as important as other longer pieces; it needn't feel insubstantial, if it's written by good enough writers; and it can be taken slowly and every sentence savoured, or it can be eaten in great big chunks, along with others of its kind.
I love the pieces you've sent to me, Douglas, and look forward to you perhaps sending more.
Thanks, Jane for contributing to this dialogue... and as I have said elsewhere, thanks for taking my Greyling Bay submissions... and be sure, more will be with you very soon.
Best
D
Thanks for your cooment on GB (think I had that one coming!)
Re your comment on quality, I agree. But we know where the good stuff can be found!
AliB
Post a Comment