Intimidated by computers and other mechanical devices powered by electricity, Barnaby decided to write his Great American Novel in longhand.
Unfortunately, before he wrote a single word, Barney discovered sharpening pencils was an excellent delaying tactic.
Now, knee-deep in sawdust, he has a new excuse for not writing: tennis elbow.
John H. Dromey has stories published hither and yon, as well as some places in between.
Start with truth and wait for fiction to reveal itself. Punch it up. Tenderize the truth. Add a dash of Hunter Thompson’s brains. Scraped off the wall. Drizzle with some mescaline. Garnish with spent casings and discarded drafts. What you get is mostly pulp, spiked and unsweetened. Distill with caution.
Nikita Linivenko hates writing bios in the third person.
He had time to write and he had a plot. His favoured genre was crime, schemes to outwit the establishment. This book would be an autobiography.
He wasn’t yet sure of the ending but there was time for that, a lot of time. The judge had given him ten years.
Chris is a Health Service Research Manager from Wales, UK. He lives with his wife Hayley and Boarder Collie Toby in Pembrokeshire. He enjoys fishing, kayaking and cycling around the west coast of Wales and is a self-confessed flash fiction addict with some publication and competition success. See more at fusilliwriting.com.
My knee knocked the leg,
pencil thrummed the tabletop.
My gaze wandered:
Water pitcher? Commonplace.
Handmade spoon rest? Sentimental.
A bee rebounded off the window.
Then Amalie, ecstatic:
“Mom! Have you ever
stuck your nose
into a sweet pea
and breathed so deep
you thought you’d
gone to heaven?”
Perfect.
Melissa is a sweet pea enthusiast living in Canada.
Time to launch my poem into the world.
The journey begins with abstract watercolors – yellow swirls, purple splatters. I print my poem in 12-pt Arial. Since cutting feels predictable, I rip my words from the page. Once glue hits that wild art, a collage is born.
Blue ribbon – county fair.
Roberta Beach Jacobson is a poet from Iowa. This year she won three blues and two reds.
It was an ordinary weekday for the two retirees. He wanted to go to the shore; she wanted to catch up on her writing. She gave in.
A horn bellowed from the speakers somewhere above. They looked oceanward as the whale came up for air.
She had her next story.
Ruth Mannino is a retired math teacher, tutor, and business analyst, who has always loved to write. Meditation and mindfulness being a part of her everyday life, in 2020, she published Thursday Mornings: Breathe, Stretch, Listen, Love, a series of interviews she conducted with senior members of her chair yoga class. She has just discovered flash fiction and finds it motivating!
Anon essayed a purely descriptive tale. The result? A formulaic editor’s dream, but a story enthusiast’s nightmare.
By telling perusers nothing—despite showing plenty—the disjointed narrative had a ho-hum beginning, a muddle, and an enigmatic ending.
With no explication whatsoever, readers could only wonder what it was all about.
John H. Dromey thinks this story is about someone’s pet peeve (inspired perhaps by comments from a particularly inflexible show-don’t-tell editor). As always, and as it should be, readers can decide for themselves.
Pulling my hair out, trying to get every sentence right. Hemingway says there’s nothing to it; that all you have to do is sit and bleed. I hemorrhage, knowing time can’t salvage a fluff-piece.
The Marquee de Sade wrote his magnum opus on toilet paper. Mine’s writing on the wall.
Nikita Linivenko failed English his junior year of High School (due to lack of trying).
His hand trembled as he slid the lock all the way to the right. Click. Giving it one extra, reassuring nudge, he thought, “There, now no more evil can be created.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
His knees weakened. From within the bolted box, he heard it: the pen, writing once more.
Elizabeth Lorayne is a printmaker, artist, and an award-winning and critically acclaimed author. Her work has also appeared in The Haiku Foundation Blog, Boston Literary Magazine, and Cathexis Northwest Press. She holds a B.S. from The New School in Manhattan, where she studied art, psychology, and creative writing. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts with her husband and daughter.
He forced her retirement.
She used to love writing. He mocked her stories, told her he paid her to edit, not write drivel.
His words ate her confidence and she stopped writing.
For a while.
Bookkeeping will soon discover a theft. She’s left plenty of writing behind to implicate him.
Sharon Gerger is about to retire. She will not be committing any crimes on her way out the door. Her writing appears here and there, in print and on the internet.