Ever heard of 100-word flash fiction? I’m not sure how many of you were following this blog way back when I used to call it “Madison Woods” and used to write a lot more fiction.
Well, writing anything remotely resembling a complete thought, let alone a story, is difficult with only 100 words. It’s great exercise, though.
Here’s one of my favorites. This little snapshot of a scene will be used in one of my upcoming Bounty Hunter novels. As were most of my flash pieces, it was inspired by a photo/image that I took.
She rolled the pink sapphire from hand to hand, gauging the weight.
Placing it to her lips, she inhaled slowly.A few stray ions lingered.
Good.
She placed the stone into her mouth on her tongue, avoiding her teeth. Touching them would have grounded the little energy she’d managed to siphon off.
Raising a small box to her mouth, she deposited the reenergized jewel inside.
Fractured light burst through the sheer mica top, particle and wave both playing a rhapsody against the miniscule tiles lining the sides of the container.
“Hear it?” She smiled. “That’s where I got my name.”
Getting Back to Fiction
And now I think I’ll dip my toes into doing it a bit more often. I won’t blog about it here after today, though, so if you want to hear about my fiction life, follow me at my Rural Fantasy blog.
I’ve also been writing #vss365 tweets. This is even shorter than 100-words. You can find me there as @erthwitch, if you’d like to connect with my alter ego at Twitter sometimes.
The 100-word Flash Fiction group called Friday Fictioneers
I started a round-robin sort of group on my blog at some point near 2011 or 2010. I found some willing writers through Twitter, mostly, and we started a weekly thing. We’d share short stories, very short stories, based on whatever photo I’d pick for that week. Then we’d read and comment on each other’s work.
Those were fun times, but it grew and soon became a lot of work to maintain. I wanted to veer off into another direction for a while.
Fairy Blog Mother
That’s when Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, one of the Fictioneers, stepped up. She adopted my baby and gave it a new home at her blog about four years ago now, maybe five. Since that time it’s grown exponentially. I noticed today that she’s known as the Fairy Blog Mother now 🙂 She’s an excellent hostess and guide. Herding cats is one of her specialties, I know.
Current Iteration of Friday Fictioneers
If you like to read flash fiction of the 100-word sort, you’ll find a lot of it at Rochelle’s blog. Feel free to join in if you like, but first go read the introduction to how it works.
Not Abandoning the Non-Fiction
I’m not done with the nonfiction, though. Up next on the agenda is an article on Lobelia inflata for the North American Native Plant Society, which will also include one of my drawings. That will be published in summer, and another article on Green Dragon and Jack-in-the-Pulpit are on the docket for 2018.
Also on the to-do list is to revamp the DIY Ginseng Habitat and Site Assessment Guide. That’s my best selling title, and it’s in need of some cleanup.