A piece of “found” micro fic­tion dis­cov­ered inside an arti­cle on CNN.

When I’m in need of inspi­ra­tion, I often turn to poet­ry, espe­cial­ly some favorites: Robert Frost and Anne Sex­ton.

A reprint and “read­ing” of CL Bledsoe’s “The Baby,” which orig­i­nal­ly appeared in eli­mae.

So that’s today’s flash focus. Imag­ine your char­ac­ter is “Mas­ter” and he/she runs into some­thing that is “Bates.”

Anoth­er look at Roman Colombo’s talk with Ron Carl­son, an inter­view that includes a reprint of Carlson’s “I Am Big­foot.”

This Sun­day micro fic­tion comes from Zoetrope Vir­tu­al Studio’s Flash Fac­to­ry and five prompt words pro­vid­ed by Richard Osgood: Arbor, Con­spic­u­ous, Ban­jo, Indi­go, Des­tiny.

But late­ly, I’ve been writ­ing down snip­pets of talks and con­ver­sa­tions, and these excerpts read like titles of flash­es yet to be writ­ten. Here are some exam­ples from AWP Den­ver.

As much as we try to define it, espe­cial­ly once we move beyond word count, flash eludes these def­i­n­i­tions, and each new flash and each new flash writer par­tic­i­pates in the process of both affirm­ing and recre­at­ing some pre­vi­ous sense of what flash should be. 

This entry was a response to the ques­tion, “How do you decide when you have an idea, if it is going to be flash length or longer?” from the AWP Rose Met­al Press Field Guide to Flash Fic­tion Pan­el.

A link to a recap and sum­ma­ry of a 2010 AWP Den­ver Con­fer­ence Pan­el Recap — F138 The Rose Met­al Press Field Guide to Writ­ing Flash Fic­tion: Tips from Edi­tors, Teach­ers & Writ­ers in the Field.