In fact, were I to play devil’s advo­cate, I might ask, “Why did you go to the tini­est spaces of all to find free­dom? Why did you flee here, of all places, to find the free­dom in writ­ing you so desired?”

So here’s Friday’s Flash Writ­ing Prompt. Write in the style of noir. Make your char­ac­ter doomed by the very actions he/she thought would save him/her. It is Fate your char­ac­ter is up against, a world with an evil intent, to choose cer­tain char­ac­ters for doom, and yet that doom resides in their own char­ac­ters, not in the world itself. It’s a tricky thing. Try to have some­one at some point call some­one “Doll.” I love that.

Recent­ly, for the won­der­ful Los Ange­les Review , I wrote a blog entry, “Some­thing About Rejec­tion.” Here’s a com­pan­ion piece, some­thing about accep­tance. From 2004–2009, I served as an edi­tor with Smoke­Long Quar­ter­ly , by the end read­ing as many as 400–500 sub­mis­sions per month. So part of this advice comes from my edi­to­r­i­al expe­ri­ence and part comes from my own submission/acceptance his­to­ry and most is, as one might expect, a best guess. 

There’s a lot to love here in Meg’s com­ment, but I’m espe­cial­ly drawn to this com­ment: “Words like sneak­er, wave, behind, and slide. These words are flexible—spontaneous, sly, and deli­cious if you allow them to be!” The flash fic­tion writer uses words for the seduc­tion, more so per­haps than plot­ting, and they might be akin to Seinfeld’s spe­cial bed­room move, the clock­wise swirl. 

Fox­S­ex­pert (I want that title!) Yvonne K. Ful­bright in dis­cussing “The Art of the Quick­ie” writes, “What takes less time than brew­ing a pot of cof­fee, or sit­ting through Super Bowl com­mer­cials, or fill­ing up your gas tank? Sex-on-the-run, that is! In today’s busy world, the quick­ie is catch­ing on. Peo­ple are not only turned on to the time effi­cien­cy and min­i­mal efforts involved in such ‘sex­ca­pades,’ but all of the great things sex on the fly can do for your rela­tion­ship.” Just plug in flash fic­tion for “sex-on-the run,” “quick­ie” “sex­capes” and “sex on the fly”—and there’s the yearn­ing of read­ers.

Two things simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occur in this pas­sage: (1) Reuben cleans his first goose; and (2) Reuben and his sis­ter Swede con­verse about her run­ning away from the goose and, lat­er, their broth­er Davy’s gal get­ting beat up by two boys in the girls’ lock­er room. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of these two actions—much like Coppola’s par­al­lel cut­ting between Michael’s con­se­cra­tion as his nephew’s god­fa­ther and his family’s killing of all the Cor­leone enemies—creates a ten­sion between the two actions, there­by not only cre­at­ing a rich, com­plex mean­ing but also more deeply engag­ing the read­er in the moment.

I start­ed writ­ing flash fic­tion before I found it in the world—and I’m still full of won­der when I encounter it. Sure­ly not a defin­i­tive list, here, in no par­tic­u­lar order, are nine (9) things I’m thank­ful for in the world of flash fic­tion.

Now imag­ine “Helen of Troy Does Coun­ter­top Danc­ing” as flash. Well, you don’t have to imag­ine it. I trans­formed it into flash below

Why would any read­er look to writ­ers (of all peo­ple) for the real­iza­tions of life that will save them? 

Shoplift­ing. Deliv­er­ing piz­za. G-mail chats. Love. If you want to know where all of these inter­sect with writ­ing, the answer lies in Tao Lin.