Flash Memoirs

Week 3 of my FlashNaNo2020 experience, which was last week, was dedicated to memoir. In college I learned that a memoir is an account of an event the significance of which is only understood after it occurs. The four flash memoirs I wrote last week did, indeed, deal with events from years back.

Here is a little piece on writing flash memoir from True Stories Well Told. I can't tell if this is still an active site, but I liked this post.

And Flash Memoir: The Benefits of Writing Short Memoir from Writing Women's Lives Academy.
  

 

Flash Essays

Week 2 of my FlashNaNo 2020 experience didn't go as well as Week 1, at least as far as cranking out a lot of new material is concerned. I only completed drafts of two pieces, versus five pieces for Week 1, only one of which I'm really satisfied with. Also the flash story from Week 1 that I submitted somewhere during Week 2 has already been rejected. So, yes, not my happiest seven days.

On the other hand, I didn't lose any sleep over this, the way I did last week, and I focused on essays instead of fiction. I liked expanding that way. With one of this week's pieces I was able to dip into ideas from my journal. For the other, I used a prompt from the FlashNaNo people, which I hadn't done before.

Next week I'm going to work on flash memoir.

You might want to take a look at  What's a Flash Essay? by Martha Nichols at Talking Writing.

Flash Anxiety

I managed a piece of flash fiction for days 2 through 6 of FlashNaNo 2020. Yesterday's story is unfinished, and I'm unhappy with it. I was up for an hour last night thinking about it. No resolution, but I came up with a related, while at the same time totally new, idea. 

I'm taking the weekend off from writing flash to try to do some organized flash studying (instead of the disorganized studying I've been doing in the evenings) and planning, particularly of and for flash nonfiction, which I'd like to try before the end of the month.

Anyone who pays attention here knows I rarely work on weekends, so studying and planning is pretty close to real work for me..

Here is a nice piece on writing flash fiction from MasterClass. It's kind of flashy, in fact. Short and to the point. 

And if you'd like to read a very decent piece of flash fiction, try Last Long Night by Lina Rather at Flash Fiction On-line.