Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette

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One of the most important lessons that I had to learn as a writer was patience.  I was young and full of ideas and was in love with the thought of writing and being a writer; and when I got an idea for a story the words rushed out onto the page and I sent the story off.

Bad move.

You will be surprised at the things you will see in your story, the strengths and the weaknesses, if you let it sit for a few days.

It may help to make you a better writer.

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The Old Soldier is off on a beer run.  I wonder if the University of Pittsburgh is back from spring break.

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I’m trying to wrap my mind around the fact of tens of thousands of people in Japan being without food and water and shelter for several days now.  It’s a nightmare.  What do people do in a situation like that when they have to move their bowels (if they have anything in their bowels to move)?

I have a very distinct memory of being in Vietnam, near an airstrip, going out at night with my entrenching tool and my little packet of toilet tissue and digging a hole and squatting over that hole and doing my business and all the while huge transport planes landing maybe fifty yards away.

I remember it took me a little while to dig the hole I squatted over because the ground was hard as rock.

My only fear was that a Viet Cong sniper or security around the airstrip would shoot me while I was taking a shit.  That my friends is one of the realities of being a soldier.

Compared to the people in Japan, I had it good.

*****

This blog is about blogging and writing and retro-rock and sexuality and the joys and tragedies of life.

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