Monday Guest Interview: Sherrie Flick’s Flashes of Brilliance

This past summer when I was signing up for graduate classes and chose flash fiction, I asked a writing friend to tell me about it. I was captivated and skeptical. Was it possible for a poet to be successful in this genre—a style I knew nothing about, a genre I had never read—and feel accomplished?

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It's happened. Reading flash fiction reminds me of why I love writing poetry. As I am struggling to accomplish my check list of conflict, plot, language, a strong ending, resolution, whenever I write a flash piece, the poet in me keeps me honest. Poetics is weaved into each story. Sherrie Flick, in particular, uses a poetic style that devours me. Each sentence is electric. Her chapbook I Call This Flirting is filled with deeply captivating stories that are awesome, in the actual meaning of awe-inspiring. Poetic.

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I’m thankful Sherrie Flick was able to answer some of my questions.

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Did you have any alternative plans before considering writing as a career? 

I knew I wanted to be a writer at about age 16. I didn't exactly know what that meant, but I had it in my head and a few key people encouraged me.

The only other thing I'd like to do is have a little vegetable stand on the side of the road, but I live in a city so I don't think that's happening any time soon.

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When writing flash fiction, what are some key elements you focus on?

In flash, I focus on the elements of time, character, and detail.

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Describe your writing habits? 

I'm not very good at keeping any kind of schedule long term so my writing habits have varied quite a bit over the years. Writing residencies have been very helpful for me lately. I've tried to attend one a year since 2003. Then, I have from 2-4 weeks to write without interruption. Other times, I work in my writing studio (a little building at the back of my yard that used to be a garage), at a coffee shop, or in front of the wood-burning stove. I always have a journal going, and I always write my short fiction out long hand. With my novel, I typed directly into the computer, a whole new ball game. 

In 2004 I managed to get my work schedule down to Tues-Weds-Thursday with Mondays and Fridays free for writing and freelance work. So, most of my writing time is on Monday and Friday, and if things are going really great I can spill on over to Saturday and Sunday. I really love the flexibility of my schedule these days. I used to work Monday through Friday, 9-5++, and then I wrote nearly every night from 8-10pm. That's how I revised my flash fiction for the chapbook.

When I was in school—grad and undergrad and actually also the five years in between the two when I lived in San Francisco—I would set aside one day (it was usually Thursday) to spend 2-4 hours reading in the library. I would read literary journals and magazines and note what and who I liked. It was really helpful. Pure reading time, no writing except for note taking.

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What inspired you to write I Call This Flirting?

I guess I didn't set out to write I Call This Flirting per se. I had spent a lot of time writing flash fiction (oh, 15 years), and I suddenly felt like I had enough stories that I could see some of them coming together in a larger manuscript. I wanted to do something beyond publication in literary journals and a chapbook seemed like a good next step.

The stories themselves were inspired by many things—travels, my cat, the state of Nebraska, New Hampshire, San Francisco, relationships, ideas, coffee, whiskey.

The stories were written over a long span of time so I had lived in four different places and traveled a lot when all was said and done. I had a mound of life experience to draw from.

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What was the most challenging part of putting your collection of flash together?

The order was difficult to get right. The MS went through many changes, but didn't fall together the way I wanted it to until I divided it into sections. The hardest part after that was finding a title. Finding the title took forever. 

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Talk a little bit about the format of I Call This Flirting and the fortune cookie theme.

Like I mentioned above, the section breaks in the book became important to me. I needed something to create a break for the reader so he/she didn't just read right through. There are some stories that relate to each other—"Locusts" and "What If The Locusts Returned?" "Nebraska Men" and "Oklahoma Men" and some others—and I wanted that connection to be more evident. I think that happened once the section breaks were in place.

I added the fortune cookies to further slow down the pace of the MS. To a degree, the ideas of the fortunes are reflected in the stories and vice versa.

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How long did it take you to find publication for your book?

I put a version of the MS together while in grad school (it was called Steam Rising, and it was much shorter. My friend Liz Ahl self-published it under that title with her tiny press called Ultima Obscura. The first printing (of about 25? 50?) had a beautiful hand-screened coffee cup on the front.) but I was never completely happy with it. After I'd written some more stories to fill in gaps, this MS came into being. That was around 2002. I started sending it out to competitions (without the section breaks or fortune cookies or its present title) but didn't have any takers. The first time I sent it out with all the elements in place, in 2003, it won the Flume Press Prize. I remember sending it to the contest and really feeling good about it for the first time, feeling confident. And it worked!

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Do you have any advice for emerging writers about flash fiction?

My advice would be to read and write a lot. Take risks with your writing. Meet other flash fiction writers. Talk about craft. Think about sentences. Don't go straight to grad school. Travel. Learn a skill. (I worked in a bakery through my undergrad years, and then baked when I moved to San Francisco. Skills are important if you don't want to have a 9-5 job sucking the life out of you.)

The new Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction has a lot of great advice for beginning flash writers. I would read it.

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What book(s) would you recommend other writers to read? 

Etgar Keret's Girl on the Fridge
Christine Schutt's Florida
All of Richard Brautigan
Amy Hempel
Raymond Carver
Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau

Aimee Bender
Gertrude Stein

Great flash fiction is available online at SmokeLong Quarterly, Everyday Genius, and Keyhole. Those are just the first three that come to mind. There is so much going on online right now. Explore. 

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What’s next for you?

My debut novel, Reconsidering Happiness, was just published by University of Nebraska Press. I'm at work on a second novel while still writing a bunch of flash fiction. I'm currently obsessed with writing stories the length of 4x6 post-it notes. I'd like to compile those into a second chapbook manuscript some day.

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About the Author

Jess Bouchard, originally from upstate New York, is an alumni of Concordia University in Portland, OR, and is currently in her MFA program at Rosemont College. She mainly writes poetry but is recently very involved in flash fiction and prose. Currently, she's working on a book of poetry in her attic bedroom.