The value of writing flash fiction, I should've said in the title. This week, I decided to try my hand again with several flash fiction exercises and found I really enjoyed tightening my prose down to the requisite number of words. I think it's an excellent way to improve your writing in the general case as you really don't know how many wasted words you include in your work if you don't care about the word count.
As a result, I've been editing some of my short stories, trying to apply what I've learned from the flash piece editing as well as what some of my loyal reader-critics have been telling me. All this is critical now because when it comes time to start assembling the book (around November 1st), I don't want to spent two months editing again. I'd rather make one final pass through the chosen stories and poems, then spend most of my energy actually creating the book.
I'm still working on my unfinished short stories right now as well as Novel #5. In the latter work, I've started to fill in a calendar so I can better map out the timeline. This way, I won't get confused in the plot nor will the reader (hopefully).
The rest of the time I've been updating my two new fiction blogs. They've been a lot of fun because I've just opened up my mind and let my imagination pour out unto the electronic medium. I'm hoping to get some feedback on both of those to make sure I'm just not writing for myself. This time I'm looking for an audience :-)
And on that note, I'll close out this post for the evening. As always, I hope your week will be a creative one!
Michael
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