Sarah Black is a fiction writer living in Boise, Idaho. She recently started Bannock Street Books, which publishes flash fiction chapbooks.

Lauren had such a great idea last Monday, I decided to confess, too. But which sins? Which categories? I’m shoving a piece of toast heavy with butter into my mouth right now (I can always pop an extra Lipitor). That’s two sins, the butter and the Lipitor. I just felt a psychic poke from Randall—Stick to Flash.

Bless Me Father, For I Have Sinned

I would rather read than write. Ouch! Remember that sixties TV show Branded, with Chuck Connors? Where they tore off his stripes and took his sword and broke it? And he rode off into the desert, an outcast, to roam the West and dispense justice? That’s what it feels like to admit to a bunch of writers that I would rather read than write. The thing is, I already know what I think. I want to know the twisty little secrets of your mind. I’m always hungry for stories. I think everyone is hungry for stories. They just don’t know it.

I would rather read flash than novels. I only noticed this trend the last year or so, and recently, when I cleaned out my overflowing book shelves, I pulled out mostly novels as "not worth the space they were taking up." Now my bookshelves are full of lovely tight slender chaps.

I have lately read some short stories by a master whom I will not name (okay, his name starts with Doctorow), and he just went on and on and on, five, six pages to tell a story when a thousand words would have done the job. Lazy and self-indulgent! Flash writers are the triathletes of the writing world. We have the discipline; we must have nerves of steel, to let our tiny babies loose in this world that worships money; we have the time to exercise, since we aren’t slogging away in a soft chair for hours and hours, our butts getting wider and wider…. If we chose to exercise—or surf the internet for “nude photography, young male” (research only)— it is a matter of character and choice, and we are working on it, I promise.

I like reading on paper, though I have a Sony E-Book Reader and a nice, lightweight laptop. When I lie on the couch in the evening with my feet propped up and a light window behind me and a chapbook in my hands and a cat on my lap, I wonder if there can be many such perfect moments in this world. Having said that, though, the best new flash fiction is on the internet. Hands down, no question.

Those poor fools in New York, with their huge publishing houses and warehouses full of damp paper!! Doomed! They probably know it, too. The small press rules, and the best fiction is published online.

Is this going anywhere? I confess I like to listen to myself talk. My son tells me, though, that I am not as funny as I think I am, so I’ll wrap it up. My point is this, lovely writers: Do not yearn for what has passed, the big business of New York publishing and agents and thick, heavy books, stacks and stacks of them at $29.95 each, discounted to $16.95 on Amazon. Look to the small presses. Look online. Read something a bit disturbing and different from what you are writing. You don’t have to get your books from bookstores. You don’t have to get your stories from books. Write a flash; then print it up and tape it to a light pole. Write it in chalk on the sidewalk. Send it to elimae or Word Riot or juked or SmokeLong or Flashquake or FRiGG or a thousand others. Kick your babies out of the nest and let them run riot in the world!

Must go. I have a new box of sidewalk chalk and a new flash and today is the Farmer’s Market! I’m going to write it next to the mini-donut vendor for maximum exposure.