Fleshing out flash fiction: Stunt Writing day 12

August 2, 2015 /

Day 12… What happened to day 11? I walked in Costco, while I waited for some prescriptions to be filled. I walked in a grocery store, collecting items for lunch and dinner. I went to the gym and hit the elliptical machine while virtually climbing the Sears Tower (I will always call it the Sears Tower, even now that they’ve renamed it Willis, but that’s another story for another day).

Pretty dull stuff. Not much ado to make a haiku.

So onward to day 12!

I just sent in a submission to 101 Fiction, a sci-fi/fantasy/horror/surreal magazine that publishes on a quarterly basis. Their current call is for stories on the theme of “Underground,” so I wrote a flash piece called “Raven” about good and evil at the end of the world. Keep your claws crossed that they like it!

And with that, I’m onto the first piece of Week 2, dedicated to postcard stories. This should be a fun experiment, as I love flash fiction but haven’t quite mastered the subtle art of the story in such a short space. I mean, I can be brief, but it’s also got to have that pop of color. That’s the tricky bit. What to cut, what to keep?

I’ll be working on that this week, as I experiment with more short fiction writing.

Anyway, since I sent my “Raven” piece in for publication, I can’t reproduce it here. So instead, here’s a list of some other publications I’m aiming to submit to this week:

I consider submitting stories for publication to be a kind of “stunt writing” in and of itself. After all, you never really know what the editors will be excited to read, and what will make them flip you a rejection in 30 seconds flat. Maybe they’re just oversaturated with the kind of writing you do. Maybe they’re just in a mood. Maybe you really just suck. Mostly, you’ll just never know. Unless, of course, their rejection letter is a straight-up “YOU SUCK!”

I haven’t gotten any like that yet, so I guess I should consider myself lucky.

At any rate, it’s time to put more words on paper, so I’d better quit this bloggery and get to it!

So…

What’s on your To Do list this Sunday?