An excerpt from the State Department’s “Out­line of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture,” specif­i­cal­ly a sec­tion on flash fic­tion.

Write a flash inspired by Mr. T’s fash­ion show.

The char­ac­ters in my sto­ry, sub­ject­ed to the fate I’ve pre­con­ceived for them, begin with their soon-to-be-thwart­ed desires, con­front the world hos­tile to it in a series of actions, strug­gle toward the conflict’s res­o­lu­tion. No way out for them. And yet…

A begin­ning look at Mary Ruefle’s first prose col­lec­tion, THE MOST OF IT.

I’ve long been a fan of Chuck Nor­ris facts, a site devot­ed to telling the world about the unworldy bad-ass­ness of Mr. Nor­ris. Here’s a list of 9 facts I “bor­rowed” from their site, to help you embrace the fear­less face of flash.

That idea of a reader’s need for purpose–for the read­er to get an answer to “Why am I being told this now?”–is some­thing fea­tured (a lot) in Ger­ald Graff’s and Cathy Birkenstein’s “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Mat­ter in Aca­d­e­m­ic Writ­ing.

A look at THE FIRST LINE lit­er­ary journal–and their “required” first lines.

Nan­cy Som­mers writes, “It is in the thrill of the pull between some­one else’s author­i­ty and our own, between sub­mis­sion and inde­pen­dence that we must dis­cov­er how to define our­selves. In the uncer­tain­ty of that strug­gle, we have a chance of find­ing the voice of our own author­i­ty. Find­ing it, we can speak convincingly…at long last.”

A list­ing of some recent first lines to inspire one’s own.

The flash fic­tion jour­nal Smoke­Long Quar­ter­ly has start­ed a new fea­ture, the Smoke­long Weekly.I like this trend of online jour­nals giv­ing us a com­bi­na­tion of ever-chang­ing con­tent along with their sched­uled issue. SLQ is one of many excel­lent jour­nals to be found online. Check them out and dis­cov­er (or redis­cov­er) the bril­liance of flash.