2015 WORD COUNT = 32335
words
I have dabbled in writing since I was old enough to hold
a pencil and transfer my imagination to paper. It’s taken many forms from one
page stories and comic scripts to half completed screenplays and several
attempted novels.
Last year, through author Craig Anderson, I discovered a
form of writing I’ve never heard of before; Flash Fiction. I couldn’t believe
people were writing stories with word counts as low as 100 words. How can you
write a story in less than a page of your average novel? Crazy.
And yet when I followed Craig’s link to a contest he took
part in, it seemed that people could do it.
And they did it well.
And they did it well.
So I stayed and I watched. Like a kid who wants to dive
in but keeps hesitating because he can’t forget how painful a belly flop is, I
wanted to join in but didn’t feel ready. Would I be accepted? Would my writing
be laughed out as amateur? It was like trying to make friends in the playground
again.
But eventually I found a reason to take the plunge. I
wasn’t in it to win and I didn’t think I’d make too many friends (my only other
experience of online social interaction was Xbox LIVE and it’s always been best
just to stay quiet there). Instead, I thought it might be a good idea to just
use the site as a practice arena. I’d pop on every Friday, exercise my brain by
being forced to write around specific prompts, and then take that momentum into
the weekend for my own projects.
I sat in my work canteen and stared at that photo for a good
thirty minutes. I became worried that nothing would happen, that I wouldn’t be
able to create from a random prompt. And then it came to me.
I’d say it was about 70% of what ended up in the final piece.
When I finished that first draft it was a little too long and the cuts meant a
few changes had to be made. I remember the main character being a lot nicer and
not having a hidden agenda.
I still think it’s a good piece but it feels more like a condensed
prologue. Still, the main thing was that I had done it, I had put my work out
there.
Friday, 30th May 2014
153 words
(We had to incorporate Freedom)
THE LADY OF THE WOODS
I’d been watching
her for hours before she finally spoke to me. “You can come out.”
Glad that the
waiting was over I stepped from the shadows of the tree line and walked over to
the pool in the centre of the clearing.
“Why are you
watching me,” she sighed.
“I wanted to see you
for myself,” I replied.
“And?”
“You are indeed
beautiful.” And she was. The lady of the woods, a creature of nature; skin of
grass, hair of ivy and eyes like lily pads.
She dipped her hand
into the water. “Why are you here?”
“I want to help
you.”
Her emerald eyes
widened. “You can lift my curse?”
“More than that,” I
said. “I’ll give you vengeance against those that trapped you here.”
The ground trembled
as she stood, the earth becoming her body. She was majestic.
I grinned. “But I
need you to do something for me first.”
One of my strengths is also one of my weaknesses. It’s
usually the level of control I have that defines which side of the scales it
sits.
I love stats and I have an addictive personality. Add this to my
urge to want to write, and Flash Fiction became my new hobby.
Every Friday I would check my phone and see what Flash!
Friday host, Rebekah Postupak had given us as a prompt. I would spend the
morning a little distracted as my imagination tried to bend the photo and the
theme into something interesting. Then I would head off to the canteen at 1pm
with my sandwiches, a pen, and a notebook to start work on it. Pages would be
torn out and scrunched up as each draft fell be the wayside until I had a story
I was happy with. In the evening I would get home, help put my son to bed before
firing up the laptop.
Sometimes things would change as I typed up the final draft.
My wife would be pulled in on editing duties (if she had a penny for every
spelling mistake she’d caught . . .). And then that scary moment: COPY. PASTE.
SEND.
After that it was waiting for the results, hoping to see my
name attached to an Honourable Mention or a runner up.
Or maybe even the winner.
My first happy, happy moment came in early July, just my
sixth entry for the contest. I managed to get an Honourable Mention and the
funniest part was that the judge was Craig Anderson, the man that got me into
this fine mess in the first place.
Friday,
4th July 2014
159 words
(We had to include a woman)
AMERICA CAN WAIT
Another piece of scrunched up paper hit the floor.
“Perhaps we’re over thinking this,” said John.
“You’re over thinking this,” said Benjamin. With his part done he
was fed up. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose. “It shouldn’t take this
long.”
Thomas turned away from the large window, where he’d been looking
out at the city of Philadelphia. He walked past his compatriots and dropped his
quill upon the drafts and redrafts piled high in the centre of the table. He
glanced at the Grandfather clock in the corner. “It’s nearly one o’clock,” he
said. “We’re running out of time.”
There was a knock at the door from the other side of the room. All
three men turned as it opened. It was Mary. “Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen” she
said. “Have you written down your food order?”
Thomas snatched the document from John and walked over to her.
“Wait,” called John. “I didn’t see they had chicken.”
“The
tone of this piece was great, playing with the reader by making them think it
was going one way only to change directions at the end and turn into something
much lighter. This contrast really worked and made the punchline that much
stronger. There were lots of little touches throughout that gave each person
character, with Benjamin pushing his glasses back up his nose or Thomas gazing
out the window at the city with his part already done. To me it also helped to
humanize these great men, they may have been working on one of the most
important documents in history, but they still have to eat!” – (Craig Anderson)
I was over the moon with that; it was like having my name up
in lights. It meant that I was doing something right.
I didn’t let it go to my head but now it wasn’t just about
getting writing practice as had been my original plan. Getting the mention,
having people congratulate me over Twitter, it was all pretty cool. I knuckled
down and tried harder the following week. What happened next is still one of my
top five moments of writing 2014.
I’d gone with a couple of friends to the MCM Comic Convention
in London where Stan Lee was guest of honour (note – after wedding and birth of
son, meeting Stan Lee is the greatest moment of my life!) so my weekend was
already on a high. It went to eleven when the results for Flash! Friday came in
and my story IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY (included in FlashDogs Anthology
vol 1) was awarded 1st runner up. That’s a silver medal. It was ten
times better than the Honourable Mention I’d been given the week previous. I
was a ‘tell the wife, the work colleagues, everyone on my Facebook’ kind of
huge.
That should have been it. I should have just ridden the high
until the next weeks contest started. But then Rebekah did something that, I’ll
admit here and now, brought a tear to me eye.
Back when I started taking part there were only about twenty
or thirty people posting stories each week and they’d usually only do one.
Things were a little easier less hectic for the judges. Rebekah used to
do something back then called Flash Points, where she’d take a story other than
the winner and break it down, praising what it did right.
That week my entry got chosen. The article she wrote (here)
was beautiful and it made the piece more special to me than any story that has
won any other contest.
Friday, 11th July 2014
152 words
(We had to include friendship)
IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY
I lean from behind the oak. All eyes on the duel. Don’t know the reason
for their feud. Don’t care. Pistols go bang, one falls down and then there’s
one less rich prick lording ‘round town. If they both fall down then that’s
double trouble.
Their companions watch carefully, making sure it's fair. You want
to talk about fair? Rich pricks ‘play’ life and death while my friends starve.
I sell one of those fancy pistols I could feed my gang for a month.
All eyes on the duel and still no one notices little old me. I calm
the horses and then climb my scrawny ass up onto the coach. Sure a pistol’ll
feed mouths for a month but imagine what me and the guys’ll get for this fancy
coach and two horses.
Shots ring out. A woman cries. I snap the reigns.
Lesson to you all; never leave valuables unattended.
This story brings the reader’s attention to the all-consuming
emotions of witnessing a duel, only to step deftly outside of them and offer a
unique perspective on how those emotions might prove a weakness. “I sell one of
those pistols I could feed my gang for a month” is a great way to make a point,
and maintain a voice, while using natural language to do so. The tension isn’t the duel itself, but rather
the thief’s contempt for the duellers and their culture and station. I love
that this story expanded the scene around the duel and brought in such an
interesting character with compelling motivations.
After that incredible high I experienced, there had to be a
low. Things dried up and the work I produced wasn’t to a high standard. I still
had little gems here and there, a couple more Honourable Mentions from judge
Craig Anderson. In fact, it was when I had my forth HM in a row from him that I
realised something that has helped get me past the not winning thing.
I noticed that I had a 100% record when it came to the weeks
Craig was judging. I knew that there was no prejudice because the stories are
judged bling. I mentioned to him that I had four for four and he replied,
stating that 'he must just like my style of writing'.
I’ve mentioned before how it’s all relative, how one judge
can praise your work while another will read it once and let it pass them by. I
had weeks myself, back in the early contests, when I would see the winning
entry and wonder “why is that better than mine?”
You see, writing a great story is only half the process. Those
judges at the other end are the other half. It’s only when those two things
align that you can get that win. Much like in real publishing. How many times
have you read interviews with now famous authors who mentioned the amount of
publishing houses who turned down their novels. Everyone knows that JK Rowling
didn’t sign with the first publisher she sent Harry Potter to.
This was nurtured by my addictiveness and I ploughed on
ahead, writing every Friday, no matter what. I knew that one day, the right
prompt, the write judge, and the right inspiration would align and I’d have
that winners spot I craved.
And so things carried on, through the summer, nothing
changing too much. I got a couple more Honourable mentions and stumbled into
the world of the FlashDogs (I think I’ve mentioned them once or twice).
And then in September, I upped my game.
Until then I’d either looked at a photo prompt and been
stumped for a large chunk of the day, or a story appeared almost fully fleshed
in my mind, begging to be let loose on the page. But on Sept 5th, I had
two ideas.
I checked the rules and sighed in relief when I discovered
you were allowed a max of two entries. My ‘twins’ could both be freed. Lord be
praised.
And that should have been it really. A minor dilemma, the
scare of Sophie’s choice, happily avoided. The next week should have been a
return to normal service, right?
So why did I actively think up two stories. And do this in a
hurry on the morning I was supposed to be getting ready to go on holiday. “Just
five more minutes,” I shouted down to my wife who was ready to pack the car and
head off.
So the week after that I went back to one.
Then another double. Then another. It was upping the odds.
Giving myself more of a chance, right? Well kind of, but it also allowed me to
take the prompt in two totally different directions. This is the main reason I
did it, if I’m honest. To be able to post a dark brooding thriller and then use
the same picture for a side splitting comedy was just me playing in a bigger
sandpit.
I’m still chasing that elusive win. I thought after I won a
couple of Angry Hourglass contests that the appetite would fade but it doesn’t
seem to be that way. This is the one that started me off and this is the crown
I want most of all.
And despite not having that win, I’ve still accomplished so
much in the last year. Without Flash Friday I wouldn’t have met such a
fantastic group of writers, I wouldn’t have my work published in a bona fide,
physical book (with another on the way) and I wouldn’t be learning and growing
as a writer.
I could ramble on all night about my experience with Flash!
Friday but I’ve got washing up to do.
So I’ll just finish up by saying thank you.
Thank you to Rebekah for running a fantastic site. Seriously,
it’s grown so much in the twelve months since I joined up; so many new authors,
so many weekly stories. And there you are, adding features, contests,
interviews. It truly is a hub for people like me. You’re a legend.
Thank you to Craig Anderson. I've mentioned the anecdote often, I know,
but its small moments and random meetings that change the course of our lives.
If he hadn’t have written a book called ‘Get Lucky’, I wouldn’t have ended up where
I am today.
Thank you to all the great authors who turn up every Friday
and lay down their best. You don’t make it easy to get my first win but it
wouldn’t be worth winning if it wasn’t against the greatest.
And finally, thanks to all those writers that turn readers
once their pieces are up. You write just a sentence or two after someone’s
story and move onto the next. But that short, positive comment can keep a
writer smiling for hours. I know, it works on me every week (unfortunately I’ve
struggled for the last few months to find time for commenting but I hope to be
back soon).
If you’re reading this and you’ve not yet taken the plunge
then why not head over to Flash!
Friday this week and have a go?
I leave you now with two of my personal favourite entries.
One got a HM for dialogue and the other fell by the wayside. I don’t know what exactly
it is I like about them, I just do.
See you in seven.
(every photo prompt for my first year of Flash! Friday)
Friday, 10th October 2014
147 words
(We had to include surgery)
SEND OUT THE CLOWNS
“I don’t want you guys to
leave.”
“Believe me kid,” said
Tramps, “we don’t wants to go eithers.”
If Tramps had a heart it
would have broken as he looked into the kids eyes. He glanced around at the
others; Wacko, Short-Short, Cracker and Dodo the Wonder Dog. Despite the
sadness of this moment they kept smiling, just like always.
“Then why? Why won’t I see
you again?”
“Your parents, they think
it’s bestist if we weren’t arounds no more,” said Tramps. “Doctors gonna switch
of the part of your brain that helps you sees us.”
“Please don’t let them.”
Tramps reached out and
placed his hand on the kid’s chest. “Seeing ain’t always believing. We’ll
always be here. Promise.”
The others nodded as Tramps
pulled the kid tight and gave him the best hug ever.
When the kid opened his
tear filled eyes they were gone.
Friday, 30th January 2015
209 words
(We had to include Man vs Man as a
conflict)
THUNDER AND LEAD
Thomas squinted as the wind
brushed his face with dust. His revolver gained weight as the seconds passed.
He adjusted his grip, steadied his aim.
Several feet away, under
the shade of the last tree, his brother watched him.
“You won’t shoot,” said
Jonathon.
“You underestimate how far
you’ve pushed me.”
“Please. We grew up
together. You’ve never been able to make the tough decisions and you’ve never
been able to get your hands dirty.”
“What you did was . . .
ungodly.”
“Then let Him inflict his
justice upon me. Release the burden to your higher power. Maybe He’ll have the
balls to follow through.”
Thomas felt his trigger
finger itching to release the thunder and lead but he refused to believe his
brother was truly lost.
“Tell me one thing,
brother,” he said, “and answer with honesty, if you can.”
“As true as blue,” replied
Jonathon.
“Why did you do it?”
“Why not?” Jonathon’s smirk
became a monstrous grin, one so full of evil that it was the exclamation mark
on his soul.
A tear rolled down Thomas’
cheek as he realised his brother no longer walked the earth.
The finger tightened. The
thunder cracked. The lead flew.
And there was one less
monster in the world.
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