![]() ![]() One of the things I love most about short fiction is the invitation to experiment. I redrafted it several times, making it longer and shorter, adding in different aspects, taking them out again until, finally, I was happy with it. It was originally intended for a daily tweet story (based on the #vss365 prompt for that day), but I couldn’t get it right. The first draft of that story was written at the side of the pool while my eldest son was at his swimming lesson. The opening story in my micro fiction collection, ‘ Arrhythmia’, was first published in Popshot Quarterly ( Issue 27 – Mystery) and remains one of my favourites. Over time, I amassed a lot of stories, and the idea started brewing about a collection of 100 x 100-word stories. Writing 100-word stories started specifically when I discovered Morgen Bailey’s online monthly competition in which you can enter up to three pieces on a theme and I’ve entered nearly every month for several years. In the years since then, I’ve written hundreds, maybe even thousands of pieces of short fiction. I’ll be honest, I didn’t write a complete story every single day, but the things I learned that year were invaluable: I learned that I have more ideas than finished stories I learned that I will probably always find endings hard, titles too I learned that I’m not a planner I learned that writing is essential in my life, is essential to who I am as a person and that I love flash fiction. I decided to follow suit (except I only posted one ‘best of the week’ story on Fridays). He had set himself a challenge to write a piece of flash fiction every day for a year and post them all online. ![]() One day I stumbled across Calum Kerr’s blog who, at the time, was the Director of National Flash Fiction Day. I had already started writing, initially non-fiction about my years living and travelling in and around Germany, but whenever I tried writing fiction I always got stuck after a paragraph or two. ![]() My love of flash fiction began around ten years ago. It opens with a story first published in Popshot Quarterly last year. 100neHundred, Laura Besley’s collection of 100 stories of 100 words, is published tomorrow. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |