Sadness is Made of Nothing: Flash Fiction

Flash fiction writing has been a passion–my first love, really, when it comes to writing. I started with writing for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, churning out 24 pieces in as many days, based on random prompts from the audience.

That experiment in rapid, free-form flash fiction writing stood me in good stead, and now, almost a decade later, I still enjoy the form. It is quite unforgiving, so it helps me now when I edit my novels. If each scene doesn’t shine like a piece of flash, the language edits aren’t there yet.

I’ve continued with flash fiction writing as well, and once in a while, one of them gets accepted for publication.

Here’s an excerpt from the latest to come out, Sadness is made of Nothing, at Lost Balloon:

If someone asked you what you’re sad about, you couldn’t tell them, not exactly. All you know is it is like a battery. It fuels you to run, get things done, till one day, you stop, left only with the toxic residue.

When you water the lilies, they die. You don’t tell anyone your mother died a while ago, and no one asks you. You feed your cat, only to never see her again. You bake a cake, following the recipe to the last teaspoon, but it collapses at the center. You have a date, but he stands you up. Trains leave before time, without you. The bus driver does not wait even when he sees you in his mirror, running full tilt, your bag and scarf and hair flying. Your sadness grows, and in a strange way it makes you feel good. This is what you deserve, you tell yourself, you deserve to be alone with your collapsed cake.

You can read the rest of it here, if you like.

It took me 4 years of sending it to magazines, off and on, and about 26 rejections, to find an acceptance. I have a few sitting around in my writing folders.

Lately, I’ve started off a pet project: the One-Shot. I’ll be writing a flash piece each month (or two, if my bandwidth allows) within the universe of The Blue Bar, my next literary crime novel, slated for release with Thomas & Mercer in Fall 2022. I sent out the first edition based on a romance prompt from a subscriber, ‘Meet-cute.”

The response has been overwhelming. I hope I can keep up to expectations.

If you’d like to challenge me with more Writing Prompts for my One-Shot Gazette, CLICK HERE. You can also subscribe to the other gazettes (I send out one with writing resources, another with reading hacks and recommendations, or the latest with short fiction) using the links below.

What sort of stories do you like? Has flash fiction writing ever been on your radar? Do you read flash fiction? What did you think of ‘Sadness is Made of Nothing’ ?

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