I thought I’d inter­view my fam­i­ly about this piece.

Bob Dylan stops by FlashFiction.Net for some inspi­ra­tional pho­to prompts. If you’d like, try to use the asso­ci­at­ed words in the writ­ing of your short short. Just be sure to remem­ber that, here, a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words or less. Not a sin­gle word more.

Pre­vi­ous posts took an intro­duc­to­ry look at Joseph Campbell’s Mon­o­myth and a more in-depth view of the first rite of Campbell’s mon­o­myth, the sep­a­ra­tion and the ini­ti­a­tion. Today, in the third part of the series, the focus turns to the mid­dle of stories–and the ini­ti­a­tion.

Just as blogs get defined by the num­ber of vis­i­tors, page views, hits, so too, I’ve begun to fear, do vir­tu­al writ­ers. In oth­er words, my fear is that quan­ti­ty (the num­ber of sto­ries pub­lished) has become a defin­ing fea­ture of one’s “val­ue” as a writer. Writ­ers, as do most of us, now exist both vir­tu­al­ly and really�and one hears of lit­er­ary agents imme­di­ate­ly doing inter­net search­es of writ­ers to see if they tru­ly exist. Per­haps that’s a bit of exag­ger­a­tion, but I’ve got­ten more than a few pub­li­ca­tions and edi­tors inter­est­ed me main­ly through my appear­ing often enough dur­ing their search­es for them to assume I must mat­ter in the tiny world of flash.

This fresh-out-of-the-shop fea­ture of FlashFiction.Net asks a writer of a piece to inter­view one of its read­ers. Here, Joseph Young inter­views Michael Kim­ball about his (short) short “Eleven.”

One of the rea­sons I am as pro­lif­ic as I am, which real­ly isn’t to say I’m pro­lif­ic what­so­ev­er, but to say that I tru­ly do write, is because my lit­tle son takes long naps dur­ing which I force myself to write. I can’t do house­work. Not only do I detest doing dish­es and get no enjoy­ment in scour­ing ovens whatsoever�but do like a clean house I must clarify�I can’t clean, because he might wake, so I write. My work must be at least tan­gen­tial­ly con­nect­ed to writ­ing for it to be con­sid­ered work. Oth­er­wise, what I am doing is wast­ing time.

The cliche “you can’t please every­one” becomes some­thing more com­plex when the “every­one” expands to include the forces with­in both the world and us. If indeed sat­is­fy­ing those wills that require sat­is­fac­tion is impos­si­ble, then how does one act in such a world? Such a world forces upon us the need to choose which wills will be sat­is­fied at the same time it denies us the abil­i­ty to know if our actions will cer­tain­ly ful­fill the cho­sen will(s). Thus, we act uncer­tain of whom we must sat­is­fy and what spe­cif­ic actions are required to obtain that sat­is­fac­tion. Even more frus­trat­ing is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the action that sat­is­fies one force will simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enrage anoth­er.

This entry is a fol­low-up to Thursday’s kind of abstract dis­cus­sion about using Hegel’s ideas of tragedy in the writ­ing of (short) short fic­tion. I thought maybe an exam­ple in which I talk about how I used these ideas in a par­tic­u­lar sto­ry might be help­ful.

For Friday’s Writ­ing Prompt, try to find a way to give read­ers access to your mind and/or think­ing, and have that ele­ment of the piece (this glimpse into the mind of the piece’s cre­ator) be an essen­tial part of the piece’s work­ings.

Writ­ers who have their char­ac­ters cre­ate their own doom end up with a sto­ry far more com­plex and inter­est­ing than those that use Fate to dri­ve the nar­ra­tive into exis­tence.