Like Olympians who don’t make the podium, writers also encounter disappointment
As I tuned in to the 2024 Summer Olympics over the past two weeks to watch incredible athletes from around the world who had devoted their lives, or much of it, to perfecting their skills, and to revel in the success of the very few who achieved medals for their efforts, I also thought about those who did not make it to the podium.
Continue reading “Perseverance and disappointment”Don’t waste words on flowery descriptions. Pull your reader into your story.
As I work on editing several short stories, I find that with many of them, I spend too much time with the set-up rather than getting to the essence of the story.
Continue reading “The set-up”Thoughts on “the subtlest instrument for self-examination … that mankind has invented yet”
My town’s public library held a used-book sale recently, and among the armful of treasures I picked up there was The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, Volume II. I’m a sucker for books about the writing craft, even if they’re nearly 40 years old (this one was published in 1988) and especially if they’re in reasonably good shape and only cost 50 cents. Shut up and take my money, I say.
Continue reading “John Updike (and others) on why fiction matters”Yeah, most of what I post about here pertains to the so-called “creative” writing arts — the short story, novel, novella, poem, etc. But I cut my teeth in journalism, then public relations and marketing, and some of the best lessons I’ve learned about writing and creativity have come from those fields and from great copywriters like Andrew Boulton, the author of Copywriting Is…, which is a great resource for anyone who writes promotional or ad copy. Boulton is also a frequent poster on LinkedIn (worth a follow), where he recently posted this gem about the source of “real creative effort.”
How are you directing your creative effort?
‘Short stories and novels are the whole nine rounds of a boxing match, while flash is a duck of one punch.’
The genre of flash fiction has become more popular and visible in recent years, thanks to the work of people like today’s Friday Five writer, Tommy Dean. A writer of “mostly flash fiction,” as he puts it on his website, Dean also is an editor of the flash fiction literary magazine Fractured Lit and a writing coach who offers editing services and writing workshops. He is the author of Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022), a collection of flash stories, and two flash fiction chapbooks, Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021). He has been previously published in The Lascaux Review, New World Writing, and Pithead Chapel. His stories have been included in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020. He lives in Indiana with his wife and two children, and he and I share the common experience of having detasseled corn in our youth.
Continue reading “Friday Five: Q&A with flash fiction writer and editor Tommy Dean”
