It's over

 

It's over...

Thirty days of receiving a prompt that will trigger a piece of flash fiction.

What is flash fiction you may ask?

In a flash fiction workshop I attended once, the leader described it this way: think of a house as a novel, a short story as a room and flash fiction as a closet. 

Over the years flash fiction has been described as a complete story under 1000 (and sometimes 750) words. 

Many are shorter with the classic being, "Baby shoes for sale. Never worn."

For the past 30 days, I eagerly awaited the new prompt. Ideas, words, swirled in my head until I could get to the computer. Unlike when I'm working on my novel, I cut and pare from the beginning rather than in many later revisions over time.

Nancy Stohlman was the driving force behind what I called a marathon, because that's how I felt. I was running word laps every day with pauses to read what others were writing. 

She used Facebook as her production medium and has 404 followers. Not everyone posted every day. Some wrote and never posted. Others just read the postings. Reading was fun, fascinating and often inspiring. The different stories from the same prompt is an example of human creativity.

I wanted to know more about this woman, who created this writing whirlwind in me. She was kind enough to respond to my questions.

As a military brat she moved every two years living in several states and two countries. In 1995 she settled down in Denver where she still lives.

Like so many things in life that happen by lucky accident, she says, 'I discovered flash fiction in graduate school--took a random class (this would have been 2007?) on flash fiction...It took me that whole semester to "get" it. But then it clicked and I was hooked, started a flash fiction press (Fast Forward Press) with fellow grad students in 2008 and never looked back.' https://fastforwardpress.wordpress.com/

What a change from writing novels in traditional formal. "I had always been writing long form--novel. Once I realized I didn't have to say all that other boring stuff (!!) I never looked back."

I'll miss the daily workout, and hopefully if Nancy did this 10 times before, next November will be an 11th. 

There is nothing stopping me from doing my own prompts from a line in a book or something I see, but the energy of knowing how many other people all over the world were at their computers were pounding out a few sentences that became a full story in the same time frame I was doing it was immeasurable. 

Looking forward to 2022.