Living the Fictional Dream

“Remember?” was the third story I had accepted and the second one to be published. Every Day Fiction is a really cool publication that sends a piece of flash fiction to your email inbox every day. “Remember?” was the story of the day for February 22, 2008.

Flash fiction is a complete story told in 1,000 words or less, so they are short and easily read in one sitting, like on your lunch break. From a writing perspective, telling a complete story with character development, character change, plot, etc., in such a limited word count is a big challenge, but it is a fun challenge. A stretch of the writing skills. And my first three acceptances were all flash — and, strangely enough, flash that I wrote randomly on the spur of the moment.

“Remember?” was the second piece of flash I was inspired to write instead of writing my 2007 NaNo novel (this was the first one). We were at my parents’ cabin, and I had this glimmer of an idea of a married couple talking about things from their life that hadn’t actually happened, but that they wished had happened — making up memories as they moved along in the conversation. And, thus, “Remember?” was born.

This is my first (and, so far, only) literary fiction that has been published. Usually, I write genre fiction, but I do have a couple of other literary pieces out there making the rounds.

If you’re a writer and you write flash, I highly recommend Every Day Fiction as a market. They only pay $1 per story, but if they accept your story you’ll get a lot of exposure out of the deal. Their concept is unique, and they have a large number of regular readers, both on their site and on their email list and RSS feed. They also have an active writer community/forum, and when your story is published you’ll get thoughtful feedback from other writers.

If you enjoy reading flash, I also recommend EDF. There are scads of stories there for the perusing, so there is enough to keep you reading for a while, and there are genres and topics for every preference. Of course, if you like my story, I’d love to know about it. And if you’re already there and looking for something else to read, check out the stories written by my fellow writing group members: Alex (Crush is one of EDF’s top 25 stories ever and he has a flash mystery, “Aftershocks,” coming out on EDF in May), Stephanie (”Brimstone and Liars” is also one of EDFs top 25), Virginia (”The Hole” is one of my favorites of hers), and Jens (”Socks and Banshees” is cute and fun).