I think short stories are a way for humanity to keep an informal record of itself. We want to know where we have been and maybe where we might be going; this helps to give us some sense of control over our destiny. But things are pretty crazy now. Events overwhelm us. We suffer from information overload. So many things should have been done yesterday; but we still need our short stories. They help keep us sane, human. It’s just that now there’s even less time for reading stories then there was twenty years ago. And we still want our stories to tell us something about the human condition even if it’s something small. Stories still must have a protagonist and something must be at stake; and something must be different at the end.
This is why we read flash fiction. This is why it’s a great time to write flash fiction.
