Flash Fiction Again

My fondness for short fiction is no secret. My love for Flash Fiction isn't either. It is amazing to me, how a story with so few words can sometimes be nothing short of dazzling.

I'm late getting around to Flash Fiction Online again this month and found August's offerings a little disappointing.

The online magazine has had better months, but among the also-ran stories, there is one little gem. It is a re-telling of the Tortoise and the Hare,a tale rife with political undertones and a wonderfully snarky ending. Ah, the power of "everybody says so!" and partisanship.

Here's where you can find it:

The True Story of the Tortoise and the Hare

If you'd like to read the other stories, here's the link to the homepage: Flash Fiction Online

The Power of Wishing

Wait, the picture is nothing to get excited about. Such a book doesn't exist--yet. It's all about thinking positively. That's "the secret," so I'm told.
Lucky for me, I have friends who were willing to share "The Secret" without charging me thirty bucks.
So, I'm making up my own little dream bulletin board. What can it hurt, right? As long as I don't try to let the bulletin board (and wishing) do all the work, maybe that little book will no longer just be an image I downloaded and used a photo-editor on, but an honest-to-goodness object I can hold in my hands.
Wish me luck!

The Wind Out of My Sails

Rejected! That word is so crushing. It must be all those hard consonants.
I'm trying to get back in the writing groove after getting a story rejected. If writing is hard, getting something published sometimes feels next to impossible.
The editor was perfectly polite, saying that she liked my idea, but that the story "never caught fire" for her. This is a very polite way of saying it was boring. Yee-ouch.
I'm trying to stay positive. If my stories are getting rejected, at least it means I'm still knocking them out and sending them in.
After a rejection, I'm often left with a dilemma. Do I trash the whole thing? Revamp, ramp up the tension and action and resubmit to another publication? I'm still not sure.
For now, I'll make like the little guy in the picture, but get back to work tomorrow.

Subjects and Verbs that Don't Agree and Dangling Participles

A friend recently dropped off some books for me. The pile included a small, self-published chapbook that was put together by some other people.
While I admire the effort of self-publishing, (and, let's face it, the ability to actually finish a story or two--something I'm finding increasingly difficult)the grammar and sentence structure errors in many of the stories left me twitching, groaning and rolling my eyes.
Honestly, I'm not that much of a nit-picker over grammar. Well, maybe a little. Okay, maybe a lot. In fact, my nit-picking is why I'm so slow to produce anything. I agonize over every sentence, every comma--to the point that it often interrupts the flow of my writing. The thought of submitting a piece of writing with glaring errors makes me cringe. I still don't get it all right, but I keep trying.
The main problem in this little chapbook seemed to be subject verb agreement in some sentences.
In one story the protagonist is trying to kill a giant scorpion that has invaded her house. Here's an example of where the author has an agreement problem: "Jumping over it, I reached the closet door."
Obviously, the author meant to say that she jumped over the scorpion and then reached the closet door, but instead it sounds like she jumped over the closet door.
One of my biggest no-no's is mistakenly using the dreaded dangling participle. Like this sentence: "The baby grasped the old man's pants leg with pink, chubby fingers."
I submitted a writing exercise to my instructor that contained that sentence. She got a good laugh out of it, as I remember. Naturally, I meant to say that the baby had pink, chubby fingers, not the guy's pants.
I keep that sentence in my mind every time I'm writing to make sure my participles don't dangle.
When it comes to editing, nit-picking will only get one so far. Eventually, I have to turn my stories over to someone else, asking her to please be on the look out for grammar goofs or sentences that are unclear or awkward.
An honest, knowledgeable proof-reader is a writer's best friend. Mine is.