FlashNano2024

 

It's over!

During November there were 30 days of prompts to write a Flash Fiction piece to that prompt. I did 25 of them. This is the second year I've done FlashNano. 

It's like training for a marathon, a literary marathon, pushing my creative muscle to the fullest. It changes how I create. I also enjoy reading how others have used the prompt for their own stories.

When I work on a novel (see https://dlnelsonwriter.com) my characters live with me. They whisper in my ear when I'm cooking or yell at me thru the glass door as I shower. If I take a walk with my dog and husband, they point out something to add to a scene I might be working on.

In FlashNano2024, the character arrives, tell me what to do and leaves, They don't bother to stay for a cup of tea. Because it is so fast, there's no time to polish before the next one invited him/herself in and we are off again, although I could go back and polish some of them, change a word here or there, cut out an adverb, show not tell. Maybe I will.

November has time problems for me, but I adjusted. One story was written on a Toulouse-Lisbon flight. Another around the conference my husband was working in Portugal. The words were in my mind, except when we went to a tapas restaurant with the conference staff. Everything was so tasty that it will live in my memory forever.

Then as soon as we were back in France, it was time to transfer to our Geneva home for the winter. An eight-hour drive was good to think up the flash fictions for the one I'd missed in Portugal eating tapas.

Thought about the next story as I unpacked, set up the laptop and could sit down and pound out the piece and post it.

Off to Zurich. I stayed in the hotel while my husband did three interviews. He's a journalist. We were invited to lunch with one company, and our dog Sherlock, had his first professional lunch.

Back home in Geneva, I've heard a knock. "We're back!" Flo, Nancy and Rick, the three main characters in Twins, the novel I was working on before November, arrived with their suitcases. The month ahead has few interruptions and I should get back to work on it.

• "Have you decided how I will react when Alexandria tells me she's carrying her husband's baby?" Nancy asks. 
• "And I need to figure out why I can't stand Beth-Lee?" Flo says. "Never mind the company problems."
  
• "I want to continue being the fake CEO of the family business," Rick says.

In my mind, they make themselves tea and unpack. Outside it's cold. Tomorrow, I need to go reread what I've written before FlashNano. I will use my file card trick, a card per chapter. Makes it easy to rearrange. 

And I look forward to FlashNano2025.