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Caught Flashing

By Tania Runyan 7 Comments

Everyone knows writing conferences can get a little crazy. In fact, this normally prim poet was just caught flashing at the Midwest Writers Workshop.

Fiction flashing, that is.

I should have seen it coming. I hadn’t written fiction in nearly two decades, was let loose in Muncie, Indiana, without my husband and kids, and was tempted by an accomplished author, Lee Martin, to flash out a story in thirty minutes.

Using Stuart Dybek’s story, “Sunday at the Zoo” as a model, Martin presented us with a sample narrative structure for a piece of short-short fiction. In fact, he writes about it on his blog.

My first reaction was panic, of course. How could I write a short story in thirty minutes when I sometimes spend thirty minutes on one line of poetry? What in the world would my characters do? Stare at a wall? Jump off a bridge?

There was no escape. I was sitting near the front. So I stared at the wall for a few minutes — then jumped.

As soon as I got my first sentence down, the exhilaration hit. Two characters came to life with just a few words, and they soon started cartwheeling through my brain. It was wild to see what they would do next as I wrote without stopping, no thought given to word choice or rhythm. I let them do what they were created to do (where did they come from, anyway?), and when Martin gave us the two-minute warning, I wrote a punch line of sorts and stopped.

Fiction. Not perfect, not award-winning, but there. A beginning, middle, and end in a mere 231 words.

I read my piece, feeling even comfortable enough to share it aloud in the class. At that moment I decided I wanted to relive the excitement regularly and committed to setting aside a thirty-minute time slot once per week to exercise my flash fiction chops.

Writing outside one’s typical genre taps into an unused portion of the brain (I have plenty of those), sparking imagination and delight without the self-imposed pressure of publication or “success.” I don’t care if I become good at fiction. I may never come even close. But there is something about simply delighting in the writing process that, well — isn’t that why we started writing in the first place?

Newsfeed

After a month of watching my wife Jennifer upload dozens of daily pictures of Patty Cake, our yawning kitten, I decided to take matters into my own hands and hack into her Facebook account.

What?! Pamela Chen, her maid of honor, posted immediately in the comment box.

Sicko, Matt Johnson from the class of ‘87 remarked.

Outraged comments flashed in the notifications bar for ten minutes before Jennifer came barreling into the living room. She clamped Patty Cake under her arm, the first juvenile to live in our house since our daughter ran away six months ago.

“What did you do?” she screamed, holding up her cell phone convulsing with messages.

“Oh, it’s not—”

She yanked the laptop away from me to view her account’s newest upload. It was Patty Cake, photoshopped with Xed-out eyes and a heroin needle dangling from his arm.

“What the hell are you doing? You belong in jail!” She spasmed in anger, so much that Patty Cake quacked in pain then yelped as she slammed the laptop on his tail.

“Oh, baby. Oh, God, I’m sorry!” she sobbed. She knelt down to kiss his fur and soothe his tail now cricked at a 45-degree angle.

Later that night, as my wife sat in the emergency veterinarian’s office, I checked my newsfeed: Jennifer has changed her status from married to single.

Photo by Maccio Capatonda,  Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Tania Runyan, author of A Thousand Vessels.

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Tania Runyan
Tania Runyan
Tania Runyan lives in Lindenhurst, Illinois, a sort-of suburb, sort-of small town, where the deer and the minivans play. She's a 2011 NEA fellow and mama to four poetry books—A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, Delicious Air, and What Will Soon Take Place—and three (much cuter and noisier) human children. Tania is also the author of five non-fiction books—Making Peace with Paradise, How To Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, How to Write a Form Poem, and How to Write a College Application Essay. Visit her at TaniaRunyan.com
Tania Runyan
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Filed Under: Blog, Fiction, Short Story, writing prompts

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About Tania Runyan

Tania Runyan lives in Lindenhurst, Illinois, a sort-of suburb, sort-of small town, where the deer and the minivans play. She's a 2011 NEA fellow and mama to four poetry books—A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, Delicious Air, and What Will Soon Take Place—and three (much cuter and noisier) human children. Tania is also the author of five non-fiction books—Making Peace with Paradise, How To Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, How to Write a Form Poem, and How to Write a College Application Essay. Visit her at TaniaRunyan.com

Comments

  1. L. L. Barkat says

    August 10, 2012 at 10:48 am

    Ha. 🙂 Loved this, Tania.

    Your brain has a lot going on it that you didn’t know about, huh? 😉

    Cool to hear a little about the writing conference. Can’t wait to hear more from your other sessions! (We’ll hear more, yes? 🙂

    Reply
  2. Maureen Doallas says

    August 10, 2012 at 11:06 am

    A flasher that makes me laugh! Love your post.

    Reply
  3. Megan Willome says

    August 10, 2012 at 6:28 pm

    You made me laugh, Tania. I don’t like cats or Facebook, so this was perfect for me.

    Reply
  4. Tania Runyan says

    August 10, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    Thank you for the comments, everyone! I hope there a few things knocking about in my brain. And I do like cats and Facebook, believe it or not!

    Reply
  5. Dave Malone says

    August 11, 2012 at 10:24 am

    That was really great, Tania. That’s a brave task; I would have stayed in panic mode. 🙂

    I love this: “It was Patty Cake, photoshopped with Xed-out eyes and a heroin needle dangling from his arm.”

    Reply
  6. Tania Runyan says

    August 11, 2012 at 8:06 pm

    Thank you, Dave! Panicking can have its benefits.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Storm in a Teacup: Slowing to the Speed of Tea - says:
    November 8, 2017 at 8:56 am

    […] Sometimes we encourage writers to use a “found” sentence, phrase or word as a “poem starter.” This week’s reading in Storm in a Teacup is full of interesting lines and phrases. For our writing prompt this week, choose a line from the reading and use it to start a poem or a short vignette. Since we’re talking about how “the speed at which things happen matters,” you might even try a piece of flash fiction. […]

    Reply

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