The American Short Short And The Imagination

One of the reasons I love flash fiction is because the writer only has to capture “several moments” in time.  Capturing several moments in time is much easier then trying to capture days, weeks, months or even years which is what a novelist must do.  A novel takes great perseverance.  Flash fiction doesn’t take perseverance; but it does take focus and imagination.  Imagination is the fun part.

At the moment that I’m writing this, using a pencil and paper, I’m sitting on the sofa watching a cooking program on Public Television and sipping on a glass of beer.  It’s around 60 degrees in Pittsburgh on an overcast day.  Nothing much is going on with me right now.  But, I’ve been a soldier, a karaoke singer, a lover of women, a teaching assistant at the University of Pittsburgh, a life long college student, a filmmaker, a blogger, a photographer of nude women, a frontman for several rock and roll bands…The list goes on and on.  Just like the list goes on and on for any writer of fiction. 

It is this life experience that every writer’s imagination can drawn upon that allows the writer to produce creative writing.  It’s just that a flash fiction writer only has to capture the “significant moments” of his or her life to produce a good flash fiction story.

Here’s a story that I recently produced.  Tainted Love (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Tainted-Love.683751

Tainted Love (A Flash Fiction Story)

Hello, my brother and sister bloggers and writers.  It’s a dreary, overcast day in Pittsburgh.  But blogging must go on…

Sunday is the Pittsburgh Marathon.  Organizers have registered 9000 runners.  No, I won’t by running…

Yes, the Old Soldier has a short short story for your reading pleasure.  The title is “Tainted Love.”  You know where I got the title from, don’t you?  From the song by Softcell.  Let me give you a little history behind the writing of the story.

It took maybe an hour to write it.  I had been “thinking” about a new story for days.  I began to think about how restricted my life has become since taking early Social Security.  I drink beer and blog.  I’ve become a semi-hermit.  How do you get a short story out of that?  After I wrote the first draft, I put it aside until the next day.  With some revision, I knew I had a winner.

The lesson for all you writers out there is that no matter what your life is like it’s a goldmine  for creative writing ideas.  This is what I did.

I made myself a lot younger.  I gave myself a sexy girlfriend and bingo.  I had a love story about blogging, sexuality, male-female relationships and money.  Something any man or woman can relate to.  So, just click on the link below.

Here for your reading pleasure, I present Tainted Love (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Tainted-Love.683751

Writing Short On Long Subjects

“Writing short on long subjects” is one of the best definitions I’ve come across about what the writer of the short short, flash fiction and very short story does.  I don’t know where I came across the saying but it stuck with me.

These short narratives that the very short story writer writes are not meant to capture the big picture.  The big picture is for the novel.  Sudden fiction captures the very small picture.  The best of these small pictures “imply” a larger picture.

And “picture” is not a word that is used in this article by accident.  Picture implies something that is to be looked at as in “show don’t tell.”

To “show don’t tell” the creative writer must use words to paint a picture that tells a story.

The Modern American Woman (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/The-Modern-American-Woman.632185

10 New Short Short Stories To Read

If you read or write short stories, flash fiction, micro-fiction, sudden fiction, short shorts or very short stories you will love these stories about love, relationships, writing, karaoke, sexuality, war, alcoholism, money and the mysteries of life.  The stories are:

True Love

Young Love

This Man and This Woman in Love

The Modern American Woman

The Death of Karaoke

Woman, Wife and Lover

Sex, Booze and a Short Memory

Vietnam in the Mist

Money and the American Writer

Love Hurts

You will find all these stories in the sidebar on the right under More Short Short Stories.

Enjoy

This Is How You Can Write Every Day

It’s around 9:00 a.m. in Pittsburgh and it’s a sunny day.  It’s suppose to be around 80 degrees today.  A great day for being outside.  Or a great day for blogging.  Or a great day for writing…

Wouldn’t it be great if Obama could squeeze something out of the credit card companies the way the credit card companies have squeezed money out of the American consumer?  At the very least let’s hope credit card terms will be written in plain language and the print won’t be so small…

If you are a writer the best thing you can do is write every day.  If life doesn’t give you much time to write, flash fiction, short shorts and very short stories might be perfect for you.  Once you come up with the basic idea, the first draft of 200 to 400 words can be written in minutes.  It’s coming up with the idea for a story that’s difficult.  So, keep a pad around or however you keep track of your ideas and “at least write down some ideas every day.”  This is how you write every day.

The following two stories are the results of this theory in action.  Just click on the links.

Money and the American Writer (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Money-and-the-American-Writer.661683 

Woman, Wife and Lover (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Woman-Wife-and-Lover-fiction.622331

Love Hurts (A New Short Story)

Yes, the Old Soldier has a new short short story for all you flash fiction readers out there to read today.  But first I’d like to do a little blogging…

It’s a beautiful, sunny 78 degrees in Pittsburgh.  Even though I can still see the Cathedral of Learning of the University of Pittsburgh from one of my apartment windows it won’t be long before new leaves on the trees block my view…

Last night I watched the movie The Last Tycoon on tape starring a young Robert DeNiro.  The film is based on the unfinished novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (one of my favorite writers) by the same name.  I read the book years ago and parts of it started coming back as I watched the movie.

The movie was directed by Elia Kazan.  If you are a writer and you are serious about writing you can learn a great deal about “show don’t tell” by watching a good movie.  The camera paints a picture that tells a story.  Words can paint a picture that tells a story, too.  It is my contention that an image, a picture, is action, is emotion, is thought.  Remember, dialogue is action, too.

Now for your reading pleasure, here is a story about sex, the desire for family, life, men, women and love in an American city. 

Love Hurts (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Thoughts/Love-Hurts.668183

Give Your Characters Life

Hello, it’s the Old Soldier here again.  Today we are blogging in Pittsburgh on a sunny, 60 degree day.  The rest of the week will be sunny in the high 70s to low 80s.  Yes indeed that’s my kind of weather in my kind of town…

Can you believe the Pirates are playing 600 baseball ( how long will that last?) and the Penguins are up 3-1 in the NHL playoffs…

West Penn Allegheny Health System has filed a suit in federal court against the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for being a local monopoly…

Dialogue.  Dialogue.  Dialogue.  Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools that a writer has.  If you want to write short shorts or very short stories that come alive then your characters must come alive and the best way to do that is through dialogue.  Dialogue allows the reader to “hear” your characters speak in their own words expressing their own thoughts.

If you’re having trouble writing dialogue remember this one thing.  Give each speaking character a different agenda.  Don’t explain to the reader what the agenda is.  Just let your characters talk and the reader will know what each character’s agenda is and your flash fiction will sing.

The following two short stories are good examples of this theory of dialogue.  Just click on the following links:

Money and the American Writer (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Money-and-the-American-Writer.661683

Vietnam in the Mist (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Vietnam-in-the-Mist.643749

Money And The American Writer (A Short Story)

Yes, I do have a new short story for your reading pleasure; but before we get to it I thought I’d do a little blogging first…

My niece Brianna Frost, who is a webcam stripper, is now a reality television star on an MTV show called The Girls Of Hedsor Hall.  I wonder how far her career will go.  Her career started with her making videos of herself dancing around naked in her apartment and then posting the videos on the Internet.  I’m not making this up.  Does anyone even watch MTV anymore?  And you wonder where I get my ideas from for my flash fiction…

After I post this on the Gazette I’m going for a walk to Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy” (the sun is trying to come out) to pick up a few items from the supermarket and maybe to have a couple of beers at Del’s Italian Restaurant.  Many businesses in Bloomfield still have black bunting up outside to honor the three Pittsburgh police officers killed by Richard Poplawski…

All right, now for the story “Money and the American Writer.”  I was a TA (Teaching Assistant) at the University of Pittsburgh from 2004-2006 while I worked on my MFA in fiction writing.  Chuck Kinder, the head of the writing program, had awarded me a K. LeRoy Irvis fellowship which paid for my entire graduate school education for three years and gave me a nice stipend to live off of.  He liked my flash fiction.  Part of the contract I signed to get the fellowship was to teach a class for two years while I worked on the MFA. 

I had my own little cubicle–no door–where I had to put in so many scheduled office hours a week in case one of my students needed attention; they would know where to find me.  Never in a million years, especially at the age of 58, did I ever envision myself teaching undergraduates.

The following story is based on that teaching experience at the University of Pittsburgh.  Just click on the following link:  www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Money-and-the-American-Writer.661683

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Ah, here we are on an overcast, mild Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh drinking beer, listening to Pirates baseball on the radio and blogging about male-female relationships.  I’m talkin’ about love.  I’m writing about trust, respect and passion.  I’m rappin’ about life.

I’m 62 years old and although I never married the Old Soldier had his fair share of willing women.  Of course I’m talking animal sex here.  The women were quite happy with this arrangement, too.  I grew up during the “sexual revolution.”  But if you want to get love you have to give love and as a young man this concept of love was foreign to me.  If I only knew then what I know now I might have a wife and family today.  Fucking is not love.  I got the two mixed up.

Let’s see if the young male protagonist of the very short story “True Love” knows the difference between sex and love.  Click on the following link to read this short short piece of fiction: www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/True-Love.638929

The Danger Of Using Friends In Your Fiction

It’s 11:45 a.m. in Pittsburgh, a warm and sunny day.  A great day for blogging, writing and drinking beer.  Later today, I plan to enjoy a nice walk from my apartment in Oakland to Del’s Italian Restaurant in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy.”

My peeps, Rick and Dianne will probably be at Del’s and Johnny Del, one of the owners, will probably be there.  I used all three of them in one of my short stories, “The Death of Karaoke.”  Rick and Dianne loved the characters based on themselves.  I used everyone’s real names.  John hasn’t read the story yet.

Last week, Dianne said she was going to print out the story and let John read it today.  I don’t think John will like the story.  I mean, the story is my fictionalized version of why Del’s Friday night karaoke scene is a shadow of what it was four years ago.

That’s the danger when a writer uses his or her friends as characters in flash fiction.  The friends may not remain friends.  Click on the following link to read the story: www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/The-Death-of-Karaoke.627745

My Wife Is A Lesbian

“My wife is a lesbian” is a short story idea I recently came up with.  I thought it had all kinds of possibilities but I didn’t want to make the story a cliche.

How a writer deals with a story line will have a lot to do with whether or not the story comes out trite.

Now of course since I’m a flash fiction writer I was going to use the form of the short short and the very short story to guide me.  And since I fancy myself a literary writer I was going to use understatement.  Nothing over the top.  I was going to use dialogue and everything I’ve learned from Hemingway and Raymond Carver, my writing mentors.  And I was going to blog about it.  Of course the story takes place in Pittsburgh.

Here for your reading pleasure is “Wife, Woman and Lover.”  Just click on this link: www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Woman-Wife-and-Lover-fiction.622331

New Short Short Stories

Do you enjoy flash fiction, very short stories and short shorts about male-female relationships?  Do you enjoy dialogue in your stories?  Do you enjoy stories with a beginning, a middle and end?  Do you enjoy stories about the complexities of sex and love?

Then you’ll enjoy the new stories under More Short Short Stories in the sidebar on right.

Six New Short Shorts To Read

If you enjoy flash fiction, very short stories and short shorts you’ll love the all new stories under “More Short Short Stories” in the sidebar on the right.  Each story is under its own title.  

Remember, the Gazette is always looking for fiction submissions.  Writers and bloggers should first read the submission guidelines before sending anything.

The American Short Story As Cinema

The Modern American Woman (A Very Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/The-Modern-American-Woman.632185

As a writer, I try to use words to paint a picture that tells a story.  Or we can call this “cinema on the page.”  There are plenty of examples of this cinema on the page in the sidebar under the category Flash Fiction Stories by Guy Hogan.  What’s so great about cinema on the page?

Well, what’s so great about cinema on the silver screen?  I can only imagine the shock of movie goers in let’s say 1895-1905.  Yes, there were movies even then although they were only black and white with no sound and most were only a few minutes long.  But they were movies all right and these first primitive films “packed them in.”

The reason the “flickers,” as they were called, packed them in is because of the images of “life” on the screen.  People could “see” life on the silver screen.

That’s why I try to use words to paint a picture that tells a story.  Why don’t you try cinematic writing, too.

*****

The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is open to short story submissions.  Writers should read and follow the guidelines before submitting.

Teaching Yourself To Write

Here’s a short story for your reading pleasure: www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Vietnam-in-the-Mist.643749 

A writer really teaches himself or herself to write.  A professor or an editor can point out mistakes, can point the writer in the right direction, can encourage and even reward; but writing is really about two things: reading and writing.

A writer should read as much as he or she writes.  Not only should the short story writer read short stories but the writer should also read books and articles on how to write short stories.

This is why writing is really self-taught.

*****

The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is always open to submissions.  Writers and bloggers should read and following the submission guidelines.

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