Archive for the 'Monday Chat' Category

Most of the titles were chosen once I completed writing a particular flash. I would sit a moment and use the first title that popped into my head. And it seemed correct, appropriate, somehow, doing it that way.

There are simply realms to which we as human beings are not necessarily privy, most times. But just because you can’t see a thing, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Au contraire! And I like prayer a lot. Poetry is a particularly human brand of prayer.

In short-short fiction writing it’s a good idea to show action at every opportunity. I remembered that action from watching people do the “chicken dance” in a local park (“Come on, buk-buk.”). My characters are based on a composite of real people – they’re not snatched out of thin air.

Recently:
   Front Page: June
   Editor’s Eye: Steve Himmer

We don’t need a new wave of feminism in America. We need a tsunami. I’m willing to sacrifice my lipstick and my eyeliner if I have to but I refuse to put down my vibrator and my pen.

The Hughes family, who live on Long Island, feel as much a part of Montauk as the reverse. They vacation there, every year, and have done so for well over a decade. I couldn’t imagine them anywhere else on Memorial Day weekend.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Molly Peacock
   Front Page: May
   Books at Fictionaut: Giraffes in Hiding

I always hated the idea of the food chain. Everything is food for something. We are lucky that nothing usually eats us to death while we are alive. But when we die, it is another story.

For the most part the narrative comes out the way it comes out without revision. I read somewhere recently how essential it is for flash pieces to have a strong opening sentence, but for me they just start the way they start without prodding or poking.

When I wrote “Letters, notes, conversations, partings,” I thought I was at a crossroads. I wanted to be at a crossroads. I predetermined I was there, as a way of calling time. I thought four years was long enough for writing letters from my mother’s house. The lists in the story — if I can call it that — are written from the point of view of time starting anew.

The goal was to write the antithesis of a Valentine’s Day flash. No lovey-dovey crap allowed.

Susan Tepper:  Roberto, in your striking poem “Oh, dinner“ I was immediately swept up by the opening.  You write: Could have been the Geisha I drew with a blue crayon, the children and I shared a green and a blue one A man and his children drawing with crayons.  A simple enough act.  Yet right away, this seemed much […]



Welcome

Fictionaut brings the social web to literary fiction, connecting readers and writers through a community network that doubles as self­selecting magazine highlighting the most exciting short stories, poetry, flash fiction, and novel excerpts.

Fictionaut is in the invite-only phase. Request an invite to join or log in if you have an account.

twitter_32 facebook_32 rss_32

Fictionaut on Twitter

Books by Our Members

        Add your book...