As BP fails again and again and again to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, residents on the coast from Texas to Florida are beginning to realize the magnitude of the disaster which is now the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the United States. Already, 25% of American waters in the Gulf of Mexico are too poisonous to fish. These fisheries may stay too poisonous to fish for years to come. Hundreds of thousands of people watch helplessly as their livelihoods and way of life is being destroyed. Most the people who depend on the fisheries for their family income will be ruined and will never recover from this disaster.
BP has proven that it cannot close the head of the oil well and that the only sure solution will be the relief well that is being drilled but won’t be ready until August.
Calls for the Obama Administration to push BP aside and to take over the capping effort are nonsensical. No administration knows more about drilling for oil one mile deep in the ocean than the oil companies that do this kind of work. Why doesn’t Washington push BP aside? To replace BP with what?
Something the media seems to be ignoring for the moment is, will the oil spill hit the East Coast? Scientist have warned that the oil seems to have entered the current loop which will take the oil around the tip of Florida where the Gulf Stream will pick the oil up and spread the crude from the shores of Florida to the shores of Pennsylvania.
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Hello, my brother and sister bloggers and writers. It’s the Old Soldier here with another edition of the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette. The Gazette is looking for subscribers, submissions and readers. The Gazette has a great ebook for sale. You’ll find all these tabs at the top of the page. And don’t forget the contest. Tell all your friends about The Gazette. They’ll appreciate it.
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Does Your Story Move?
Movement in a short story is absolutely necessary. If there is no movement you don’t have a story. Instead, you have a sketch.
The shorter your story is the less movement you need to make it a story. Also, the less movement there is in a story the more believable the story will be.
What do I mean by movement? Movement is the amount of narrative distance your short story has to travel to reach its resolution. So, if you’re writing a 200-word short short the story had better begin just before the resolution. If you’re writing a 2,000-word story you can begin further away from the resolution.
When a writer creates a story, there must be just the right amount of movement to make the story seem true.
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The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is always open to fiction submissions.
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When I Was A Young Man (A Flash Fiction Story)
I had written my quota of pages for that day. I left my apartment and a few minutes later I was walking around the big bend in the avenue. The Cathedral of Learning of the University of Pittsburgh stood tall and gray against the bright sky. There were lots of other young people wearing shorts, holding hands and eating ice cream cones. Someone called my name.
It was Lisa Graham. She was a friend of Sandy’s. Lisa’s dark hair was cut close to her skull in back and at the sides. It was full and curly on top and swept forward down over her right eye. She wore a white, sleeveless T-shirt with RELAX in red on the front, black lace gloves with no fingers, and black cloth stretch pants ending just below her knees. Some sort of black boxing shoes were on her feet. Her socks were bright red.
“What’s amusing?” she said.
“The way you dress. I like it. Come down to the place with me.”
I bought a newspaper along the way. I liked Lisa and her punk friends. I didn’t like the way there always seemed to be something strange about her eyes. I didn’t think she needed glasses. We sat at a table next to the big window on the Bouquet Street side. Lisa seemed younger than Sandy though they were the same age. We each had a mug of beer.
“Sandy told me you work for a supermarket chain,” she said.
“Five years.”
“I can’t imagine working anywhere five years.”
“It’s only three nights a week and four hours Sunday mornings. I saved my money while I was in the army.”
“I’m just floating through school. I don’t know what I want to do. I might be dead next year.”
“Hope not.”
“I’ll stay in school as long as my parents pay for it.”
I took a drink of my beer and looked out the window.
“Do you party?” she said.
“I like to have a good time.”
“No. I mean do you party?”
“Orgies?”
She laughed, sipped some of her beer and looked at me. She said, “Is beer all you do?”
“If I’m smart.”
“I have friends who can get you anything you want.”
“Oh?”
“Did you do anything in ‘Nam?”
“My unit was clean.”
She shrugged and finished her beer and left a little while later. It was a lovely day. I had done a good amount of writing that morning and now the sunny day made me happy. I opened the newspaper. A man confessed to slaughtering his wife and children. A chemical spill had forced an evacuation. A woman police officer emptied her revolver into her sleeping live-in boyfriend. A rapist claimed his fifth local victim. A family of seven was found killed execution style. Americans were reported still being held prisoners in Vietnam. I got up and threw the paper away.
The place got crowded. When Henry came in he didn’t see me. He started to walk back out. I called to him and he came over and sat at my table.
“What’s up, Henry?”
“Everything’s turning to shit. I need some bucks.”
“You had three gigs last week.”
“They didn’t show.”
“The band?”
“I’m sick of bands. No body wants to practise. They just want to jam. The bass player can’t get along with the drummer. The manager is screwing the chick keyboardist. The guitarist wants to sing more lead.”
“Will a twenty help?” I gave him the money.
“I had some people lined up to see us. The band said they were tired of playing the same place every week. It was a paying gig. So what if it is the same place. It was packed every Saturday night. You’ve seen it. We were bringing in an extra two thousand dollars every Saturday night. Manny loved us. There was never any trouble. All the frat parties lined up for the fall. They were going to give us a shot here on Wednesday nights. And the band doesn’t show up.”
He was a good singer and a great performer. I hated to hear the band was no more. Sandy walked in. A shoulder bag with a long strap was slung from her left shoulder. Her light brown, short hair was windblown and she was wearing sunglasses and a long, white sleeveless sundress. Her face, neck and arms were lightly tanned. She looked fresh and very young. She saw me and made her way up to the table. Henry looked up. She took off her sunglasses and smiled down at us. Henry stood up.
“Henry, this is Sandy Meyers. Sandy, Henry Porter.”
She reached to shake his hand. He held her hand, bowed slightly and kissed the back of her hand. She made a little curtsy. He gave her his chair and pulled another one over.
“Beer?” he said to Sandy.
“Thank you.”
“Henry, let me.”
“You get the next round.”
He made his way to the bar. Sandy leaned against me and kissed me in the mouth.
“Miss me?” she said.
“Always.”
She rubbed her nose against mine. She took a brush from her shoulder bag and ran it several times through her hair. She took out a compact, looked at her hair and face and then snapped the compact shut and put it and the brush back in the shoulder bag. She pressed a leg against mine. She wormed her hand into mine and we held hands under the table. Henry came back. She let go of my hand and we kept our hands on top of the table.
I said, “Here’s to the best damn lead singer in Pittsburgh.”
“Are you a singer?”
“When I’m up there.”
“I play a little piano,” Sandy said.
“Really?”
“Chop sticks.”
“I’ll kill myself!” he said. “I swear it!”
“You don’t like chop sticks?”
“He just lost his band.”
“An easy five hundred a night,” he said. “All the suds we could drink. All kinds of frat parties lined up. They don’t show.”
She said, “I had a friend who was in an all girls band. Roadsickness. Ever hear of them?”
“You mean Carsickness,” he said.
“No. Roadsickness.”
“They play Pittsburgh?”
“Mainly house parties.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“Oh, somebody slept with somebody’s boyfriend.”
“Exactly,” he said. “It’s not music. It’s comedy.”
After the third round Henry left. Sandy and I sat and looked at each other. I said, “How was your week?”
“I found out I maxed two exams,” she said.
“Get out!”
“I’m going to get another four hours in work-study, too.”
“Wonderful.”
“I had lewd thoughts about you.”
She looked around, leaned closer to me and pulled up her long white dress. Her legs were hairless and smooth. She wasn’t wearing a slip. I felt my groin tighten up. On the inside of her right thigh near the crotch of her white panties was a fading purplish mark the size of a half-dollar. She threw her dress drown.
“Did I do that?”
“I call it your vampire kiss,” she said.
“I guess I got carried away.”
“You always get carried away. That’s what I like about making love to you.”
We were holding both of each other’s hands on the table top.
“How’s that?” I said.
“You don’t hide anything,” she said. “You don’t keep anything back. I think it’s the only time you totally let go. You’re very oral.”
“Must mean arrested development or something. You bring out the beast in me.”
“You were beastly before I met you.”
We talked about this and that and then I said, “How’s your friend Lisa?”
“Oh,” she said. “All right.”
“She was in here earlier.”
“Was she?”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a student.”
“What does she do for money?”
“Her parents have money.”
“Enough for her to buy drugs?”
She let go of my hands. “If her parents knew…”
“She deals, doesn’t she?”
“What she doesn’t use.”
“What’s she in to?”
She sat in silence and would not look at me. The silence stretched between us. I took her hands in mine. She looked me full in the face. Any time she did that I always felt her basic sincerity. It was the sort of vulnerability and sincerity most of us lose when we stop being very young children. It made me feel she was sitting beside me naked and unaware she was naked.
“You don’t use anything,” I said. “Do you?”
“I get high on us.”
It was that day, sitting at that table, that I realized I loved Sandy Meyers.
The End
Short Story Ideas That Work
Blogging: Business or Pleasure
Blogging: What’s Your Blogging Persona?
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This Is Your Life
Are you a student? Are you a manager? Are you a cab driver? Are you a nurse? Are you a homemaker? Are you a husband or a wife or a boyfriend or a girlfriend? Are you divorced? Are you young, middle age or a senior citizen? Are you retired like me?
Excellent. Your life will make for great flash fiction. Try writing flash fiction. The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is here to help you do just that. Use the subscription tab at the top of the page to take out a free subscription and have every issue of The Gazette delivered to your inbox.
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News: BP Oil Spill Keeps Getting Worse
The coast line from Texas to Louisiana is slowly feeling the impact of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Media outlets are reporting that scientists are warning that oil plumes, some ten miles long, beneath the surface of the water have entered the loop stream and are headed around the tip of Florida for the East Coast of the United States.
Although BP has inserted a pipe in the head of the oil well that is one mile below the surface of the ocean, at least 200,000 gallons of oil is still spilling into the ocean every day. Scientists are expressing fears that the wetlands of Louisiana may not recover from the devastation of the oil spill for generations to come.
The only sure solution for stopping the oil spill is the drilling of relief wells; but these relief wells will not come online for at least another month. In the meantime the destruction goes on as it spreads over an ever-increasing area of coast lines and ocean.
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Building A Short Story
The familiar classic form of a short story is pretty much set in stone. There is the setup, the buildup and the payoff. This is the same form for flash fiction, sudden fiction, short short stories and very short stories.
Or a writer can think of a story as a building. Here are some of the building blocks.
There must be a protagonist. I like to rummage around in my own life and come up with a projection of myself to play this part.
For conflict I pick a situation I have first hand knowledge of. That way I know what I’m writing about.
Locale is either Vietnam or Pittsburgh. Usually it’s Pittsburgh since I was in Vietnam for only a year a long time ago and Pittsburgh has been my home since I was born.
This is how you can build a story one brick at a time.
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In The Shadow Of The Cathedral Of Learning
I was back from Vietnam and discharged from the army. I was young and in college. A light snow was falling. It was night and I could see that farther down the avenue the commercial district was all lit up. I was glad I had decided to stay in Pittsburgh to go to school. I wasn’t so happy about joining the fraternity I had joined.
Well this time I wasn’t going to take any more guff from Tom. It didn’t matter that he had been drunk earlier. It didn’t matter that he was my fraternity brother. When he was sober he was too big to mess with, but he was probably still drunk and getting drunker and I could take him. I was well into the commercial district when someone spoke to me. The person was past me and I stopped and turned to see who it was and it was Joyce Lynn Summerton.
She said, “And where are you on your way to in such a huff?”
“To kick some butt!” I didn’t like the anger in my voice. I didn’t like that Joyce could hear the anger, too.
Joyce Lynn Summerton was in my Monday, Wednesday and Friday ten o’clock. I looked at her hair, eyes and mouth. Her complexion had a slight glow from the chill in the air. There was something in her shoulder bag. I shifted my books and notebook to my other hand.
More calmly I said, “You don’t make it to any of our parties anymore.”
“Not like I use to,” she said. “Some of the fraternity brothers get too rowdy for me.”
“Me too.”
We stood in silence for a moment. Her gloved right hand came up and squeezed her coat together at her throat even though her muffler must have kept out the chilly air. She smiled at me and then looked away.
“I’m headed back to the dorms to sit in front of the boob tube,” she said. “On a Friday night. Do you believe it? I just made a run for some popcorn to pop.”
I nodded and smiled.
“Well,” she said, “have to slide.”
“Joyce?”
She turned back to me.
I said, “Do you think I could come up and watch some TV with you?”
“In my room?”
“I’ll go whenever you want me to.”
“Frank, I don’t know.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
“A boyfriend?” She laughed. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
There was a display window near us. Several mannequins in swim suits were posing on a sunny beach. Joyce was looking at the display window. She put her gloved hands in the pockets of her coat and then looked at me and said, “I’ll have to sign you in.”
We started walking for the dorms.
“So,” she said, “how’ve you been?”
“Great.”
The End
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Short Story Ideas That Work
Flash Fiction Means Never Saying You’re Sorry
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