Hello.

It’s me.

I’m right here, crawling through your Internet grabbing 1’s and 0’s along the way shoveling them into my mouth like Pac-Man of yesteryear. Ohh, I’m grabbing other things, too. Those will allow me to enter your mind, zoom around, and ooze out your ear like a dead slug. Soon you’ll realize your gray matter is decreased. Nay, gone.

Now, a quick writing update: 7 Sins is dancing along, albeit alone, for now. I have set it aside to work on shorts but go back to it with notes, more notes, some more notes, and alas, more fucking notes. It’s all about notes over here. Notes. Notes. Notes. They’re literally everywhere on what else, a Notes app. But hey, getting away from something is always good, especially in writing. We go back with a new perspective, more ideas, and see and read what we wrote more clearly.

I was doing an fiction anthology of Nine Eleven, but that too, got pushed aside. Well, not so much aside, as sunk. Deep. What the group hoped to have done by now got off the ground, hovered briefly, struggled with broken wings, then fell flat like a big shitty pancake. I’ll say that the pandemic happening right when we started didn’t help. But then again, what did it help. HOWEVER, I don’t mind and have five characters to use elsewhere OR continue the story, as I have been anyway. It might wiggle its way into a different project. HINT: read below.

Years ago, I undertook a Post Apocalyptic adventure in writing. It turned out terribly. Waited-until-the-last-minute-kinda stuff. And it showed. Poor writing. Bad setup. Piece-o-shit. BUT, I never left that story. It too, takes on notes, on occasion. It’s my Everest and lemme tell ya, Everest, it’s a motherfucker. That will get finished and be part of a book of post apocalyptic shorts. Yes, there’ll be destruction. Sure, people will survive. And yeah, people WILL die. Duh. Oh, there’s also monkey shit. Literally.

For now, if you’re bored and still partaking in Quarantimes, there’s a few shorts here. I’ll update soon with more.

Yup, I love to flash. I do it often. In a purely non-physical sense, of course *winks*. I’ve also done a few past blog pieces on the aspects of flash fiction so go back and have a read.

When it comes to flash fiction, I use it as a go to when I feel stuck while writing longer stories or working on 7 Sins. And we know how long that’s been. Or when just needing a break, period. Or, at times when sitting around and an idea gets shot into my head by the Jewish Space Lasers I’ve recently heard about. Words must hit paper fast.

Actually, 7 Sins started as a flash piece, evolved into a short story, and then, wow, holy sharks that shit, grew out of control to a novel – which yes, is still a WIP. Don’t judge me.

So, here, henceforth we shall dive into how
grasping the ability to write flash fiction helps with many other aspects of writing. That’s correct, I wrote henceforth. Why? No clue. Take it to mean that this current blog – the one you’re reading right now – shall speak to the whys of how writing flash is beneficial and a wondrous tool to enhance one’s other writing abilities and not the entire blogspot from here to eternity.

In Flash Fiction You Will Lose The Bullshit. It’s helps in editing out unnecessary words. Those words shall be slaughtered with the stroke of a delete key: and, the, of, to, too, then, really, very, but, or any combo of these like and then. If you use the word therefore outside dialogue, well, leave this blog immediately. There’s zero hope for you or your writing. Obviously, there’s more, but hey, you get the idea LOSE FILLERS.

You will become masterful with commas, dashes, ellipses, and just maybe, *looks away, gulps* a semicolon. I said, maybe. You will get creative in word choice. Your writing won’t be a fat slug of wordiness, but a tightly chiseled Adonis worthy of sitting on a white slab of paper.

Focus. Focus. And, Well, FOCUS.
Flash allows you to maintain focus on the story. You don’t get buildy charter and story depth. You don’t bother with back story bullshits. You don’t give a gnats ass about superfluous flashy words. And you damn-damn-damn sure don’t get mired in telling too much. It’s like feeding a lion: you get in, you get out. You don’t stay for selfies. You don’t mingle and chat, slurping hot coffee. You sidestep the huge piles of dung while running out the gate.

It Gives A Needed Break.
It’s helps writers get away from a major work for a short bit. Usually short enough to go back a little more focused and energized. Maybe with new ideas and creativity, too.

There’s The Fun Aspect.
Writing flash gives the writer a different hole to plug; step outside a comfort zone; and, take on subjects and topics not ordinarily conquered. It gives the opportunity to play with voice. It affords a wild side to creativity – nothing should be off limits – because if there’s something that doesn’t fit or you don’t like, it’s like the heart of thine enemy, you rip it out.

Think of it like a math problem except without numbers and all the brain hurt. You have a box on your page and need all the words to fit. Make the box smaller. And smaller. And a little smaller. Those words still must fit.

Okay, Unfortunately Size Kinda Matters.
As for the word count in your flash pieces, that’s up to you but work on keeping them tight, concise, to the point, and typically under that magical 500 word unicorn. I’ve read longer, but those feel more short short story’ish.

Go forth and flash your way to happiness.

So yeah, 2020 was just one big jizz face. It was stepping on Legos with bare feet. A three-finger prostate exam. A complete fuckery. An Ikea store.

We moved from the teens to the twenties. The transition was smooth. Fine. Nonchalant. Meh. It went well.

For about eighteen days.

Then 2020 turned on us and spit fire. Spun on wicked, cracked heels, arched up, and showed long gangly teeth. The mouth opened and unhinged, releasing stingy murder hornets. Those fangs dripped with blood, death, scorn, hate, contempt, venomous despair, and an empty feeling of what the fuck. And 2020 lurched forward and sunk them in. Deep. Everywhere. In all of us.

And inside we went. Closed the door. Locked it tight. Bolted it. Put one of those old timey chunks of wood across it. And we waited. Waited for 2020 to walk away.

It didn’t.

Let’s talk writing for a second. As people who put words in sentences and eventually on paper, we tend to be a solitary beast. Not unlike the Krayt Dragon. But alas, we appear for pretzels and chocolate chips. And sometimes we combine the two with radiation. And come out of hiding for bourbon. Sometimes we answer the door. Mostly not. Otherwise, we hole up in the corner of a semi-dark room constantly complaining about the goddamn light being dim and say we’ll turn it up after the next sentence. Or paragraph. Or chapter. We never do. We ask Alexa for the time. Maybe the weather, too, but we don’t really care about the weather. It’s just conversation. We’re not going outside. The minutes turn to hours and the hours, well, shit, they’ve turned the page into the next day. And we write, constantly clicking control-s like it’s a nervous tick because, fucking 2020.

We realize we’ve been writing since sometime around…March. And we’re not done. We now have 137 works-in-progress. But nothing got done. We finished nada. Completions, zero. A big fat haha fuck you.

Holy shitballs. Where’d time go? Why do I have nothing finished? What the serious fuck?! Is Quarantimes over?

As we smooth out the dents and perma ass print from our chair, we realize it’s December. Yeah, that December. The exact last month of the year. 2 zero 2 one ahead. And we’ve been in solitude. And we realize hey, we kinda liked that. But we glance at our writing spreadsheet and see those WIPs. And we stress. A lot. But the bourbon helps.

We then flip month after month counting on one finger after another. It makes us feel bad. Disappointment hits like the underside of the desk after we dive down for a paper clip. Oh, just me? Whatever. Don’t judge me.

Is there a point to this?

Why…why yes, there is and thank you for asking.

The Point: whether you’ve completed a book, whether you finished a short story, whether you’ve done neither but have all those WIPs, don’t be deterred. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t partake in self-ass-kickery. 2020’s done that enough already. Don’t get down. Be kind to yourself. To others. Keep writing. Those works will get done.

So…

As we bid a fond farewell to the one-year decade that was 2020, we shall box it tight, label it Shark Food, and sink it into taurus infested waters of the deep blue giving it a one-finger salute before it glides its way to a watery grave. But for sure Satan will intercept with tentacle-like fingernails, tear open the crate, remove 2020 and pet it like a cute kitten all the while gurgling, “My precious.”