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Published on Leave a comment on NFFD: One week left for anthology and microfiction submissions!

National Flash Fiction Day is OPEN for submissions for our annual Anthology and Microfiction Competition until Saturday, 15 February 2025!

This is a little reminder that there is only a week left to submit your flash for consideration in our annual anthology and our microfiction competition -- plenty of time for you to draft something new or polish something up.  We are excited to read work from anyone and everyone, all around the world.

For our Microfiction Competition, we're looking for flash of up to 100 words.  There is no theme.  Your work will be read by judges Sudha Balagopal, Rebecca Field, James Montgomery and Sherry Morris.  Winners and runners-up will receive cash prizes and be published online and in our print/ebook anthology.  Full submission details can be found here and you can read more about our judges here.

For the 2025 Anthology, we're looking for flash up to 500 words on the theme of SEASONS.  Your work will be read by editors Karen Jones and Cheryl Markosky.  Selected work will be published in our 2025 print/ebook anthology and be considered for our Editors' Choice Awards which come with a £50 prize.  You can read our submission details here.

If you're looking for inspiration for your anthology, our artist-in-residence Jeanette Sheppard has recorded an ekphrastic workshop that you can follow along at your own pace.  The workshop is free and you can find the video and resources here:

Our Anthology and Microfiction Competition teams look forward to reading your work!

 

Published on Leave a comment on Have a go at irreverent, surreal and humorous stories: An Interview with Cheryl Markosky

Welcome to the sixth and final instalment in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with guest editor Cheryl Markosky who is co-editing this year's anthology. They discuss roots, influences and dinner parties, as well as Cheryl's advice for those submitting work to this year's anthology....

DS: Firstly, thank you so much for agreeing to be this year’s Co-editor. This year’s theme is SEASONS. Do you have any thoughts on what kind of flash you would like to see in the inbox, or how writers should approach the theme?

CM: I'm delighted to be co-editing with Karen Jones, who I've always admired as a writer and a person (she's terrific fun!). I'd like to see new approaches when tackling this year's theme. There are well-worn tropes in flash writing – many of them pretty gloomy – so it would be interesting to see people take risks with form and well, have a go at irreverent, surreal and humorous stories. I'm also a big fan of what I call "quiet flashes" – little slices of life that don't appear all that momentous, but underneath there's a lot going on.

DS: You are a Canadian writer, living part of the year in Nevis in the Caribbean and part of the year in the UK. Does where you are living at the time affect the kind of story you write? Yes, totally.

CM: I write best on Nevis, where there's less to distract me. Sometimes, monkeys creep into my work (we have an awful lot of green vervet monkeys on the island), like a story I had published about a woman breastfeeding a monkey (don't ask). And when I'm in London I love observing city life. Old men always sitting at the same table in McDonalds cropped up in one story. Oddly enough though, Canada's fighting its way into my writing now, even though I'm remiss in going back to my homeland as much as I should. You can take the girl out of the Crowsnest Pass (where I grew up in the Rockies), but you can't take the Crowsnest Pass out of the girl!

DS: Can you remember when you first encountered flash fiction?

CM: I stumbled upon flash fiction years back, without knowing it really, when I had a micro-story published by Reader's Digest. Then during lockdown, I was going a bit mad and thought about creative writing. I remembered Jude Higgins from a writing group I attended a couple of times in Bath and tracked her down online. I was hugely lucky to then become a member of her Thursday writing group alongside several flash fiction megastars. I was blown away by the power of teensy stories that punch above their weight coming from the pens of all these amazing people.

DS: If you could choose three writers to have round for dinner, who would they be? And what would you cook (or order in)?

CM: Elizabeth Strout, Katherine Heiney, Niall Williams. And if I'm also allowed a ghost, Alice Munro. I'd cook favourites from my Canadian-Polish-Italian childhood, such as spaghetti with meatballs, pierogis, cabbage rolls and Saskatoon Pie, all washed down with vodka and A&W root beer. I'd ask Stanley Tucci to help serve the food while reading extracts from his new book, What I Ate in One Year, which I reckon would go well with the meatballs.

DS: You are a freelance journalist, writer and theatre critic. This must keep you rather busy. What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

CM: I race around doing theatre reviews in southern England and London, as well as corporate journalism on property and travel. When I do get spare time I do yoga, swim, cycle, read and drag my family to art galleries (I studied Art History with the Open University). I belong to two book clubs, which is probably one book club too many. I'm also an avid fan of BBC Radio 4's The Archers, the longest running daily soap in the world. Reading this back, I realise I could be a strong candidate for having the most boring dating profile ever!

 

Born in Calgary, Canada, Cheryl Markosky now splits her time between London and Wiltshire in the UK, and the Caribbean. She writes flash and short stories alongside working as a journalist and theatre reviewer. Cheryl's writing can be found in EllipsisZine, New Flash Fiction Review, Mslexia, Maudlin House, The Molotov Cocktail, Janus Literary, The Cabinet of Heed, The Drabble, Urban Tree Festival, WalkListenCreate (where she was writer-in-residence), and National Flash Fiction Day and Flash Fiction Festival anthologies. You can find out more about Cheryl on her website www.cherylmarkosky.com, and on X @cherylmarkosky and Facebook cheryl.markosky.

Published on Leave a comment on Video & Links for NFFD’s Free Ekphrastic Workshop
If you missed last Thursday's free Ekphrastic Workshop with National Flash Fiction Day's Artist-in-Residence Jeanette Sheppard, fear not — we have you covered!
Here is the link to a folder with a video of the workshop and a document with Jeanette's links and resources shared during the presentation:
We attempted to record last Thursday's live session but hit a little snag when the video failed to finalise.  However, Jeanette very kindly offered to re-record the workshop.  In a slight departure from the live event, we've not recorded during the writing windows, so you might wish to have a timer to hand. Jeanette will let you know when to pause the video and how long you might wish to give yourself to respond to her prompts.  Huge thanks again to Jeanette for sharing her expertise not once but twice!
This workshop is free for all, so feel free to send the link to anyone who might be interested.
And, if you're using this video to help inspire a piece of writing for submission to NFFD's 'Seasons' themed anthology, don't forget that the deadline is 15 February 2025.
Happy Writing!

Published on Leave a comment on Strive for originality: an Interview with Karen Jones

Welcome to the fifth instalment in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with National Flash Fiction Day's Karen Jones who is co-editing the 2025 anthology alongside this year's guest editor, Cheryl Markosky. They discuss humour, inspirations, and Karen's top tip for those approaching themed submission calls....

Photograph of Karen JonesDS: This is your fourth year of co-editing the NFFD anthology and it’s been brilliant having you on the team. I know you always have lots of advice for people writing flash, whether it be 100 words, 500 words or longer, but if you had to pick only one piece of advice for writers, based on your experience of reading so many themed anthology submissions, what would it be?

KJ: Strive for originality. Themes tend to lead people down familiar paths, so we’ll get lots of stories on the most obvious subjects connected to the theme. Try to do something different, something only you could write. I often suggest making a list of the first words that come into your mind when you see a theme – then delete them and start again, digging deeper, going in directions others may not have considered.

DS: There is a great deal of humour in your work. Are there any flash fictions that you remember made you laugh out loud?

KJ: Debra A Daniel tends to crack me up. I loved this one at Bath Flash Fiction: Grand Canyon Official Form 477D. Oh, and Damhnait Monaghan’s 'And We Lived Happily Ever After', which was the title story for our 2022 anthology, is a superb example of humour.

DS: Have you always written fiction? If not, can you remember what inspired you to start?

KJ: I dabbled in poetry, briefly, but, yes, almost always fiction. I wrote short stories even when I was at school. I’ve always been an avid reader and always a daydreamer, so there were always stories in my head. I started writing with a view to actually submitting work when my sons were small and I was a full-time carer for my mother, so I was at home most of the time – it was a kind of escape from the realities of the day.

DS: Were you a reader as a child? If so, did you have a favourite author?

KJ: Yeah, I always had at least one book on the go. I was obsessed with a Scottish writer called Ruth M. Arthur. Her books had a supernatural edge to them and I loved that at the time. Unfortunately, they are no longer in print. I wish I could read them now and find out if they really were that good.

DS: Is there a flash fiction writer who has influenced your own writing? Or one who you particularly admire?

KJ: Not influenced as such – unless we count creative writing teachers who’ve helped along the way, in particular that would be Kathy Fish. But admire, yes, lots. Off the top of my head I’d say Sharon Telfer, Fiona MacKintosh, Sara Hills, Elisabeth Ingram Wallace and Tracey Slaughter. I’ve never read anything other than excellence from them and they make me want to be a better writer.

 

Karen Jones is a flash and short fiction writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and her story Small Mercies was included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She has won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and second prize in Fractured Lit’s Micro Fiction Competition. Her work has been Highly Commended/shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction, Bath Short Story Award and many others. Her first novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her second, Burn It All Down, is published by Arroyo Seco Press. She is an editor for National Flash Fiction Day anthology.

 

Published on Leave a comment on Write, rewrite and rewrite some more, making sure the title works hard: An Interview with Sherry Morris

Welcome to the fourth of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with Sherry Morris, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about her inspirations and influences as well as her spoken-word audio programme and her top tips for approaching 100-word stories....

Photo of Sherry MorrisDS: In 2022 you won third prize in our Micro Fiction competition and this year you were Highly Commended. Do you have any tips for writing a story of just 100 words?

SM: It’s always a thrill to have a micro place for NFFD! Writing a good 100-words story is tough so here’s what I try to do…know the exact moment I want to capture and the feeling I want to convey. Then I write, rewrite and rewrite some more, making sure the title works hard. Then I send it to a trusted writing buddy to see how I did—and edit some more…

DS: I understand that you present a spoken-word radio show on Inverness Hospital Radio. Can you tell us a little about the show and how it came about?

SM: Thanks for asking—I’d love to! I’ve recently started presenting a monthly spoken-word show featuring short stories and flash fiction through Raigmore Hospital in Inverness called ‘Sherry’s Shorts’. I was involved in a one-off programme the station aired of Christmas stories they were looking for someone to run a regular spoken-word show. I had no experience but volunteered. The show focuses on stories with a Scottish Highland setting or stories by writers with a connection to the Highlands—though sometimes I include stories I’ve fallen in love with and want to share. The hour includes music and chat and the plan is to also have interviews with local writers. The programme airs on Fridays at noon UK time and as the station is internet based, listeners don’t have to be in hospital to listen. 😊 There is also a Listen Again feature so the show is available anytime on MixCloud. Check out https://www.hhr.scot/ and subscribe to Sherry Shorts.

DS: Can you remember the first time you encountered flash fiction or the first flash fiction authors that you read?

SM: I don’t remember how I found flash fiction but I remember reading Ingrid Jendrzejewski’s ‘Roll and Curl’ (Bath Flash Fiction February 2016 First Prize winner) and it’s still one of my favourite flash fiction pieces. I’d been submitting my writing by then and when I saw Ingrid was a judge in the 2017 NFFD micro fiction competition, I decided to submit something. I came third in the competition with my micro and that early success has kept me submitting ever since. Thanks, Ingrid! 😊

DS: Was there a particular person or persons who inspired or encouraged you to become a writer?

SM: Aw…yeah…my high school English teacher, Mr Beussink, who everyone loved and called Mr B. He taught Creative Writing and sparked something in me—he’s the reason I became a writer. He encouraged me to write and told me I was a writer. He was my touchstone and even after I moved to the UK we stayed in touch and I’d visit him and his family when I was in the States. I always shared my writing success with him and he even appears in a few of my stories. He passed recently and it’s a deep loss. I know he was proud of me and he knows that every time I write a story, it’s because he believed in me.

DS: You are an American living in Scotland. Does America feature much in your writing?

SM: I still write stories set in America even though I’ve lived in the UK for nearly 25 years now (the last 8 in the Scottish Highlands). I’ve lived in several different places and have American stories, Ukrainian stories, London stories and Scottish stories. It all depends on the character, really, who they are determines the story’s setting.

 

Originally from Missouri, Sherry Morris (@Uksherka & @uksherka.bsky.social) writes prize-winning fiction from a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she pets cows, watches clouds and dabbles in photography. She presents an online monthly spoken-word radio show featuring short stories and flash on Highland Hospital Radio, and received a 2025 Best of the Net nomination from Fictive Dream for her story ‘The Cabbage Tree’. Many of her stories stem from her Peace Corps experience in 1990s Ukraine. Read more of her work at www.uksherka.com.

Published on Leave a comment on Shear the unnecessaries until you have your gem: An Interview with Sudha Balagopal

Welcome to the third of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with Sudha Balagopal, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about her writing habits, novellas in flash, advice for those new to writing microfiction, and more....

 

Photo of Sudha BalagopalDS: You were runner up in this year’s Bath Novella-in-Flash Award with your novella Nose Ornaments and highly commended in their 2021 competition with your novella Things I Can’t Tell Amma. Both novellas went on to be published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Could you tell us a little about them?

SB: Nose Ornaments narrates the story of three generations of women from the same family—grandmother, mother and daughter. The tale starts in 1960s India and ends in contemporary times in the US. All three are strong women who confront and surmount the challenges in their lives. The novella explores the complexity of the women's relationships with each other and illustrates the struggles in their quest for meaning and love.

Things I Can't Tell Amma, is set in the 1980s and tells the story of Deepa, a student who travels from India to the US to pursue further studies. Everything in the US is different, the grocery stores, how students dress, how professors teach. Besides, she must also contend with loneliness, little money and a sense of displacement. Along the way, she adopts a baby quail, finds a friend, and falls in love with her neighbor.

DS: You were highly commended in the 2024 and 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Micro Competition. Do you have any advice for someone perhaps attempting a micro of 100 words for the first time?

SB: Every writer has come across this six-word story at some point: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Readers get the depth, the intensity and the the emotion from what’s left out. The iceberg theory, attributed to Hemingway, says that if a story is like an iceberg, then, only the tip is visible. A short-short format, such as the 100-word story, challenges the writer shave that tip down until the story is becomes like a word snapshot, a dense nugget that captures a small, but intense moment with layers of the unsaid. So write long first, find the emotional crux, then shear the unnecessaries until you have your gem.

DS: The first National Flash Fiction Day in the UK was in 2012. Can you remember when you first heard about NFFD? Is there a story from any of the anthologies that stays in your mind?

SB: I learned about NFFD through Twitter, which I joined in 2016. I don't believe I actually engaged with the posts until a couple of years after that. I think FlashFlood attracted me first and later the micro fiction contest. One of the NFFD stories I love is Adverb, by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar. It is dense and emotion-packed and a worthy winner of an Honorable Mention in 2021.

DS: Do you need silence or an empty house to write or would you rather be in a crowded café or a room full of people?

SB: I spin stories in my kitchen, surrounded by food, by cooking fragrances, the rattling dishwasher. I have always written at home; the appeal of comfortable clothing and ready access to food/beverages far outweighs the lure of a crowded cafe!

DS: Do you enjoy performing your stories at writing events? Does knowing you might have to read it out loud ever affect how you write a story or do you ever alter the wording slightly before performing it?

SB: I do enjoy reading my stories at events. I've come to realize that the story's impact is vastly different when it's read aloud in the author's voice. And no, when I write I do not consider that I might, at some point, have to read it to an audience. As far as altering the wording before a reading, there are occasions when I might edit the story slightly, mostly to adhere to time/word constraints.

 

Sudha Balagopal is an Indian American writer whose fiction straddles continents and cultures, blending thoughts and ideas from the east and the west. Most recently, her novella in flash, Nose Ornaments, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK. Her highly commended novella in flash, Things I Can’ t Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021. Nominated for several awards, her work has appeared in Best Microfiction, 2021, 2022 and Best Small Fictions, 2022, 2023, 2024. When she’s not writing, she teaches yoga.

Published on Leave a comment on NFFD 2025: Free Online Ekphrastic Workshop on 30 Jan 2025

Happy New Year from all of us at National Flash Fiction Day!

Are you thinking about entering a flash for this year’s anthology? Maybe this year’s ‘Seasons’ theme fired you up, but now you’ve faltered or you’ve just not had time to get going.

Come and join Jeanette Sheppard, NFFD's Artist-in-Residence, in this friendly online workshop. Jeanette has chosen several pieces of art to start your brain whirring.

This is a generative workshop and will be fast-paced to help over-thinking, something many of us experience. The aim is to get something down: it might be a first draft, a collection of words or the bare bones of an idea. It's suitable for anyone new to flash and more experienced writers. We’d love to see you there!

This workshop will be delivered via Zoom and a recording will be made if you can't attend on the day.

Date: Thursday, 30 January 2024
Time: 7:30 - 8:30pm GMT

Tickets are free, but you'll need to reserve a place here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/national-flash-fiction-day-ekphrastic-workshop-tickets-1145464247399

Our Microfiction Competition or Anthology submission calls are open until 15 February so there's plenty of time to draft, polish and submit

 

 

 

Published on Leave a comment on Enjoy the challenge: an interview with Rebecca Field

Welcome to the second of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Rebecca Field, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about favourite authors, childhood reading lists, her advice for those entering the Microfiction Competition, and more....

DS: You’ve twice been Highly Commended in the NFFD Micro Fiction Competition and I wondered if you particularly enjoy writing to a limit of 100 words? Do you have any tips for entrants to the competition? Or things to avoid?

RF: In answer to the first part of this question, I would have to say that I do find micros really tricky to write and it wasn’t a length I was initially drawn to. Having some success in this competition has encouraged me to try writing them more often and I am always amazed by the winning entries, how much story can be packed into so few words. In general I prefer to write slightly longer flash pieces, however I love to support the UK National Flash Fiction Day events and so I enjoy the challenge of writing micros and entering each year if possible.

I think in terms of tips for entrants, many of these will have been discussed in detail elsewhere and by previous judges so I won’t try to cover too many here. The importance of the title for a micro is often mentioned and I think this is a very important one, as well as the sense of it being a complete story. I also like to see humour in flash and so this is definitely something I would be looking out for, but a micro that is purely a joke with a punchline or an anecdote rather than a story would also be something to avoid.

DS: Is there a book or story from your childhood that makes your heart leap a little when you think about it? Has your taste changed? For instance, if you were a fan of a particular type of novel as a child, is that something you still enjoy?

RF: This is a tough question, so many come to mind! Stereotypically for a writer, I was one of those children who spent a lot of time in libraries and bookshops, reading a lot of different books from a young age. Some early favourites were things like Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Gerald Durrell, then later stuff like Judy Blume mixed in with sci-fi stuff like John Wyndham, Orson Scott Card and Douglas Adams, all sorts really. I think that today I don’t read as much sci-fi as I did as a teen but I definitely like something perhaps with a speculative or dystopian angle that’s also well written, people like Emily St John Mandel, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, and Murakami are favourites I would keep coming back to. I of course now also read a lot of short fiction collections which wasn’t something I did as a child.

DS: If you could spend a day with one author (living or dead), who would you choose?

RF: George Saunders. He just seems to be such a nice chap and a great teacher. I would hope for some of his genius to rub off on me. I love his Story Club newsletters on Substack, though it can be tough trying to keep up with reading all the great stories and newsletters that are out there.

DS: Do you play music while you write — and, if so, do you have a favourite piece or artist?

RF: Occasionally I might play some light classical music, but in general I prefer quiet when writing and find that less distracting.

DS: Do you only write flash or are there any other forms that you enjoy writing?

RF: I mainly write flash but recently have been working more on a few short stories I’ve been tinkering with for quite some time. They seem to take forever to finish and I feel much more out of my depth with them than I do with shorter pieces, so much more space to mess things up! I also have a half-written novella in flash that is currently lying dormant but may be resurrected at some stage.

 

Rebecca Field is a short fiction writer from Derbyshire, UK. Her work has appeared in several NFFD anthologies and she has twice been highly commended in the NFFD micro competition. She has also been published online by The Phare, Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Milk Candy Review and Ellipsis Zine among others. Tweets at @RebeccaFwrites.

 

 

Published on Leave a comment on Congratulations to our 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Press Award Nominees!

We are delighted to announce our National Flash Fiction Day Press nominations for the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day season.

Congratulations and good luck to the following:

Best Small Fictions

  • 'Jigsaw Puzzle' by Sumitra Singam
  • 'Off a Duck's Back' by Jupiter Jones
  • 'Quintessence' by Marie Gethins
  • 'When The Kingfisher Dives' by Eleanor Luke
  • 'White Noise' by Rosaleen Lynch

Pushcart Prize

  • 'Containers for Smoky Memories' by Lisa Ferranti
  • 'Hollowware' by Ali McGrane
  • 'Passing Places' by Sharon Telfer
  • 'Something New to Worry About' by Andrea Marcusa
  • 'The Night Ledger' by Elizabeth Fletcher
  • 'When Finley Davy Said He'd Turn Into a Cicada' by Emma Phillips

You can read all these stories and more in print or via ebook in Tiny Sparks Everywhere: 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology edited by Karen Jones & Sara Hills, available from the National Flash Fiction Day Bookshop.

Congratulations as well to the nominees of our sister project, FlashFlood, which have been announced here.

Published on Leave a comment on The pressure of 100 words creates the rarest of diamonds: an interview with James Montgomery

Welcome to the first of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025 and this interview series will resume in the new year.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with James Montgomery, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about favourite micros, writing under pressure, the unique challenges of the 100-word limit, and more....

DS: Judging from your success with micros, I’m guessing that writing very, very short fiction is something you particularly enjoy. Do you have any advice for entrants to this year’s NFFD Micro Competition?

JM: If the very best flash fiction dazzles, then the pressure of 100 words creates the rarest of diamonds. I love the challenge of the 100-word form, how satisfying the end result is, and feel incredibly honoured to be part of the judging panel for the 2025 competition.

I think, first and foremost, make sure you feel for your piece. I can tell when a story feels ‘lived in’; when the writing comes to life in all the spaces between the words.

With such a confined limit, hone in on a single, specific emotion. Take a step back and ask what feeling you’re trying to emote. Begin with a wide lens: happy, sad, disgusted, angry, fearful, bad, surprised. Then zoom in. Maybe your happy story is about being accepted. Zoom in a little closer - is it about being respected, or valued? There’s subtle differences here. Or perhaps you have an angry character, who’s acting distant. Dig a bit deeper - are they withdrawn, or numb? Again, these nuances matter. Every word choice should be contributing towards this tone.

Make surprising decisions that still ring true to you as a writer. Ensure the ending feels earned. Force your character to act or react, always. Leave room for the reader to fill in the gaps. Choose a metaphor or central image that catches us off guard. Think about the particular and how you can make it universal.

Give yourself grace. Even now, I still feel like every new story feels like the first time, like I’ve forgotten how to put one word in front of another.

And my best tip? Go for a walk. There’s nothing it can’t solve.

DS: Is there anything you need in your writing space to help you stay focused? Do you need complete silence for example, or do you thrive in a busy place?

JM: I just need to be able to focus, but that can happen just as well in a coffee shop as at home. I love that ‘flow state’ feeling, when you’re completely immersed and can work on a piece with total clarity, and when there’s almost an altered sense of time. That’s why I say, ‘make sure you feel for your piece’. If you care about what you’re writing, then it’s that much easier to find that focus.

DS: I see from your website that you’re a member of two writing groups. How important are these groups to your writing process?

JM: Oh, they’ve been ever so important. There’s all the usual comments about how great other writers are for improving your own writing practice, but also the sense of camaraderie is unrivalled. These are your people! They will cheer when you succeed, and offer words of encouragement when you’re floundering. Only recently, my Most Rejected Story EverTM was knocked back yet again, and one of my writing groups shook me off, offering invaluable edits and suggestions.

DS: If you could be the writer of any flash fiction ever written, which one would you choose?

JM: An impossible question! There’s just too many outstanding stories to choose from. Instead, I’ll offer up ten 100-word micros that I absolutely adore, which might inspire readers for this year’s competition.

See how masterfully Barbara Diggs’ It’s Negro Day at the Fair (Welkin Prize, scroll down) uses voice. Consider the power of an extended metaphor, as in Gordon W. Mennenga’s stunning Ditch Dog (100 Word Story). Employ repetition and the breathless sentence to remarkable effect, like Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar’s Adverb (National Flash Fiction Day’s Microfiction Competition 2021, scroll down). Choose sensory language with intent, like Shane Larkin’s vivid Umbilicus (Splonk). Pay close attention to rhythm and pace, as Sarah Freligh’s Fire (Ghost Parachute) does. Reveal deep human truths, like Sara Hills’ We Knew It Was The Fitzroy’s Rabbit (HAD). Let a scene represent a theme, as Francine Witte’s After The Snowmelt (Gone Lawn) does. Study how a micro like Guy Biederman’s Berol #1 (100 Word Story) imbues its story with meaning. How Amy Barnes’ Happy Holidays, Orville Redenbacher (Truffle Magazine) uses sound and symbolism to ask questions and cause unease. How Nan Wigington’s Animals in Winter (Splonk) ends on a question that echoes long in the mind once the story is finished.

DS: Writers can sometimes feel under pressure to always be putting words on the page. Are there any activities that you feel are helpful to you as a writer?

JM: If you’re feeling the pressure, I’d recommend telling yourself you’re not allowed to write for a certain length of time. I can guarantee that once writing is off the cards, you’ll be itching to put pen to paper again.

Also, words are just words - they’re not stories. This may go against the grain somewhat, but sometimes the last thing you need to do is get down yet more flippin’ words. Time and space away from the page means you can mull over a title, ask yourself what that story is really about, deliberate and deliberate and deliberate over that word choice or phrasing. It’s all part of the process and, in all honesty, what really matters when it comes to being a writer.

A change of scene is also perfect for inspiration. For example, if I hadn’t gone to the gym the other day, I wouldn’t have had that idea for a story about exploding muscles.

I also strongly believe the best stories take time - but a deadline is also your best friend. You’ve got until 15 February 2025. I can’t wait to read your words; I promise I will treat them with the utmost care and respect.

 

Photo of James MontgomeryJames Montgomery writes from Staffordshire in the UK. He has won the Pokrass Prize, Retreat West’s best micro fiction prize and a Flash Fiction Festival competition, placed second in New Zealand's international Micro Madness contest, and been highly commended in the Bath Flash Fiction Award and National Flash Fiction Day's micro competition. His stories have been published in various anthologies and literary magazines, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net. Find him at www.jamesmontgomerywrites.com.