Write From The Inside Out

A professor at Pitt paid me a compliment that I greatly appreciated. She was critiquing how my characters talked. You see all my characters speak basically the same way: in my own version of Hemingway’s clipped, encoded dialogue. They don’t say all they want to say and sometimes what they do say is slightly oblique [...]

My Life

Well, the jobfair at computer school…Hold on.  I’m at Hemingway’s and three young women (Jess, Stacie and Jammie) sitting at the bar asked me to take a picture of them…I took two pictures.  We talked for awhile and now I’m back with the pencil and pad.  The jobfair was a pep rally.  No jobs were [...]

My Life

This morning the foot feels good.  I’m walking nearly normal. There’s another jobfair at the computer school today, a local university.  It’s 6:30 am and I’m about to step into the shower to get rid of this two week’s growth of beard.  The suit and tie are both ready.  The black boots are shined. Students [...]

My Life

Yesterday, I checked my mail for the first time since Friday and found a birthday card from me dear, old mum.  There was a fat check in the card.  I tried to phone her to thank her but found that my long distance had been shut off .  Now I can get it turned back [...]

My Life

I made it to school.  I’m in the lunch room now.  It feels good to be back in school.  It feels good to sit in the computer room in front of a computer screen, doing finger drills.  I probably won’t stay until 3:30 but it’s good to be here.  I’ll probably do some Word before [...]

My Life

It’s 6:00 am Wednesday morning.  For the first time since Friday night I had a good night sleep because my foot was not hurting me.  I’ll be going to computer school today. I made a copy of my DD-214 (to prove I was in the army) and will be mailing it to Social Security this [...]

My Life

Whew!  What a tiring day (Tuesday).  For the first time since Friday I left my apartment.  The gout is no joke.  It hurts.  Spent most of the past four days either in bed or sprawled out on the sofa.  Hobbling around on only one foot really takes it out of you.  Plus I was usually [...]

Raymond Carver And Flash Fiction

Raymond Carver was not known as a flash fiction writer although several of his stories in the break through collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love were flash fiction short.  What Carver was known for and will forever be identified with is “Minimalism,” a term he came to feel ambivalent about. For [...]

Here Are 12 Great Stories To Read

There are 12 short stories on this blog for your reading pleasure.  Just go to the sidebar and under Categories click on “Flash Fiction Stories.”  Once you read to the bottom of a page of stories just click on the link to read more stories.  You can do this until you’ve read all the stories on the site.  The stories [...]

My Life

My right foot is still swollen but is slowly getting better.  Still, I don’t know if it’ll be healed enough for me to go to school tomorrow.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk on it.  I’ve already missed four days this month because of the gout.  I’ve missed more days this month [...]