The last NANO2025

  

The announcement that Nano2025 would again be each day of November thrilled me until I read that this would be the last year. 

For many Novembers, I've participated. Every day, I and all the other participants would receive a prompt to use as the basis of a piece of flash fiction. 

Flash fiction has several definitions but the most say it's a fiction piece up to 500 words. Other definitions say the limits are between 750 words and a thousand words.

Aesop's Fables could be described now, but not when they were written, as flash fiction. Early American writers who wrote flash fiction were Ambrose Bierce and Kate Chopin.

One of the most famous pieces is "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn." Although it has been attributed to Ernest Hemingway it first appeared in 1906 when he was seven. He was first given credit for it some thirty years after his death. Despite his talent as a writer, that would have been impossible to accomplish from the great beyond.

November was my most productive writing month because of the discipline Nano2025 created. I would do the flash fiction piece along with whatever writing project I was doing while I lived my ordinary life. For me, each piece would start as a free write except, I could go back and polish, polish, polish. 

Several Novembers had challenges. There was a conference in Lisbon where I accompanied my husband. I could write around the plane rides and events, and I could lock myself into my hotel room part of the day.

At the same time, I didn't want to miss out on what was going on around me. We were at the hotel where a James Bond film was shot. The doorman, who was a young man at the time, was in the film. His role? Open the door for Bond. 

And there was the wonderful tapas restaurant, the best I've eaten at EVER.

The corridor of the hotel was full of photos of royalty that had stayed there. 

This year I thought it would be easier because we are not going to that conference, but there is a lesser glitch. We need to change countries from France to Switzerland. We do that several times a year in either direction. 

This glitch is a side trip to Meaux, near Paris, so my husband can do some WWI research for a book he's writing. When we did some research about the area, we found there would be other interesting things to investigate. After all, we'll be in a neighborhood that we will probably not return to.

One of the things about driving from place to place, I can start the flash fiction piece in my head. 

Once we resettle in our Geneva home, I'll be able to concentrate on my writing. I have to remember how lucky I am that I have so much time to write. And to write well, it is necessary to experience life.