I have almost completed five flash fiction stories. I’m writing them using a method I am unaccustomed to so it’s taking longer than I normally would. I’m not sure how I feel about this approach but I’m determined to stick with it for at least these five pieces. It’s from a free flash fiction course called How To Write Flash Fiction That Doesn’t Suck.

The process is to write them a piece at a time, as in write the beginning of each, then the middle of each, then the endings. Seems straightforward enough and since I write flash fiction from beginning to end I figured this would work for me. It does, however I don’t think I’ll do any other stories this way.

The problem for me is once I’ve written the beginning of one, I want to keep going until I’m finished with the entire story. Stopping after a couple of paragraphs is hard if I already know what I want for the ending.

The good thing about this method is when I started it I had no idea what I would be writing about. I came up with my five ideas, carefully following the listed steps. I wrote the beginnings and for two of the pieces I had no idea where they were going so I stuck to the plan and eventually came up with and wrote the middles of each. For the first three I desperately wanted to get on with it as quickly as possible. I knew what I wanted to write and the drive to do so was strong. But, the last two were a mystery to me so I didn’t veer off course.

I’ll be working on the endings today. The three I know what to do with will be easy and completed. The others I simply do not know. I believe they will be good in the end but trying to keep five different stories in my head while slowly putting them to paper is making it difficult.

I think from now on I need to work on one at a time. Coming up with several ideas at once and writing down notes on them is all well and good but working on all five a bit a time isn’t for me. It was a great way to come up with five completely different stories because I had to write all the ideas on one page. If one was too similar to another I took one out and came up with something new. In that respect I’m glad I did this. A couple of these new stories will probably be posted soon. The others I’m saving for a different project.

As for my WIP, I have done some work on it as well. I had an awesome ‘what if’ moment a couple of days ago and I’m going with the new idea. Lucky for me I won’t have to change much of what I’ve already written. I will have to add a prologue (probably) but I’m okay with it. Basically someone who was super important and absolutely couldn’t die is going to do just that. My main characters and their friends won’t know it until the end of book one. Their entire goal is to stop the soon to be dead person from escaping her prison and destroying the world. My muse decided this character wasn’t the ‘ultimate big bad.’ Now my poor ensemble cast has no clue who or what they are contending with. I fought against it a bit but I see how it’s a good thing now. Thanks muse!

Reading update: I am rereading The Aurian Saga. It’s not well-known, nor particularly popular but I love it. It’s a four book series and I’m on the last one. They have their flaws but are still favorites. These are novels I’ve reread so often it’s time to replace them. Pages are trying to fall out. The cover of one is mostly destroyed, which really ticked me off but probably happened in a move so I calmed down. The spines are in bad shape and one has a mystery spill on it. I want to be mad about that but I’m the only one in my family that touches these books so whatever is on it (tea maybe) is my fault. I read the first three novels in a couple of days. It was pretty easy because I was sick and in bed for most of two days.

I feel much better today so I’m determined to do more than just read. My plan is to finish the flash fiction or at least three of them. I also want to keep working on catching up on the big class I’m taking. I have physical therapy today so I probably won’t want to move very much by the time I get home but sitting at the computer doesn’t require a whole lot of range of motion. I’ll be miserable but I’ll try to work through it. I think the therapy is helping but I’m a big baby when it comes to pain so it’s hard for me to say if I’m in less pain than when I started it.

Writing this post was a nice warm up so I’m off to write some fiction!

---

Oh and I thought about doing Camp Nanowrimo this month but due to a human glitch I can’t see official notifications in my region’s nano Facebook group (the people in this region never look at the nano website). Hopefully this will be fixed by November because even though I think I shouldn’t, I probably will do Nanowrimo at that time. For now I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add something else on top of all the other things I have to do anyway. Are any of you doing camp this month?

---