The Only Thing Skinny - My Fiction

A new term has been coined for short, short fiction, it’s called Skinny Fiction. 

Gary Taaffe may be the person responsible for the term, and he has a blog dedicated to this type of short. Writers are encouraged to send in stores with word limits less than flash. 10, 25, 50, at most 100 words. 

The most widely known and often quoted example of skinny fiction is by none other than Ernest Hemingway. The story goes that in response to a bet to write a story under ten words in length Hemingway did of course, with brilliance. Full of intrigue, mystery and emotion. He wrote:

Classified:  Baby Goods

        For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

During a flash fiction workshop with instructor Devon Ellington last month, an optional exercise to produce a twitter story of 140 characters or less piqued my muse. In the shower, where of course, the best ideas are spawned I came up with the idea for my first foray into skinny fiction.  I’m no Ernest Hemingway, but it was fun.

I’ve reformatted the story here from the 140 characters for twitter, to thirty words just for ease of reading. 

                    SOS

At sea. Dog and me. Feel so free. 

Dog died. I cried. 

So sad. Feel bad.

Got a cat. Imagine that.

Two days later, I hate her. 

Kitty-whipped. Abandoned ship.  

 

So at least something is getting skinny this year, if only my fiction. Wish my thighs would follow suit.

As always feel free to post your comments or your skinny fiction.

Another Step toward the Elusive Published Author

This blog is all about my journey toward publication, and to that end I have been successful. I have been published in online ezines, several times.  I won a prestigious contest, and the entry was published

in print in my college alumni magazine.  Is this publication success?  I'd like to think so, 

but how do you measure publication success?  

Not as easy as it once was with all the options now out there. Self-published, small press, big six, in-print..

Seeing your book on the bookshelves of the local bookstore, which was once the dream of every aspiring author, may slowly be an impossible goal.  Ereaders, smartphones, tablets, who reads a book anymore?  Many of us do, and I have been polling all the younger generation I come in contact with, much to my teenage children's horror, on the viability of the printed book.  So far the answer is still overwhelmingly--printed book.  Maybe they look at me and my wrinkles and think that is the right answer. LOL

But for me, being able to hold a printed edition in my hands is still something I long for and now I can. This past week I was published in an anthology The White Sail available on Amazon! 

I've never had anything available on Amazon before and it is a milestone.  I need to do an Amazon author page.  How cool is that? (baby steps for me, remember?) 

Even though the monetary reward is smaller, and the prestige probably not as great as the contest win, this is a big deal to me.  Another small step toward my even bigger goal of a book in print. You know the kind you can hold in your hands, and sign with wise words and the flourish of your practiced signature? (Okay, maybe that is only me)

By the way, you can also read my story here "Look Out for Fluffkins" here free.  But this in no way diminishes my excitement of the printed anthology :)

Feel free to comment on your small steps toward publication and how you measure success, or anything else you'd like to comment on.