Flash Fiction Course Filled, My Article Byline Restored, Flash Fiction Quotes

Flash Fiction Online Course Filled for October
(Next Course in January).

My online four-week course in Flash Fiction has filled again (it begins October 30th). I limit the number of participants in order to give everyone in the course the personal attention they deserve. I'm pleased that so many are interested in learning more about how to write these fascinating stories.

I probably won't be teaching another course on flash fiction until January 2007. Stay tuned for the next course date sometime in the first of the year. Or you can check the course schedule at flashquake http://www.flashquake.org/online-classes/index.html for updates.

I look forward to Monday, the start day of my new course, when I'll get to work with a whole new group of creative people eager to learn more about writing flash fiction. (I recently finished up teaching my four-week online course in haibun writing and was very pleased with the results. I got some good feedback from participants and I always like and appreciate that.)

My Flash Fiction Article Byline Restored

Some of you are aware that my online article, "Flashes on the Meridian: Dazzled by Flash Fiction" (originally published in Riding the Meridian and other places under other titles), was "lifted" and claimed by someone else for use in another publication. Well, the fine editors of Kavitayan, where the incident took place, took remedial action and have replaced the undeserved byline with my own. As it should be since I'm actually the one who actually wrote the article.

I'm so grateful to editors who make things right again when someone decides to call someone else's work their own. That particular article has been published (with my byline) at numerous publications (Riding the Meridian, Net Author's E2K, Writing World, Fiction Fix, Whim's Place and several other places) so I don't know what made the person who took my article think she/ he could get away with claiming it as her/ his own! Thanks to fine and caring editors, this person didn't get away with it. If you're not familiar with my article you can now see it at Kavitayan http://www.geocities.com/kavitayan/flash01.html where it has MY byline now.

Flash Fiction Quotes

Joyce Carol Oates says in her Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers:"One way of approaching the miniature narrative is to read it backward, for the final line is everything. And one helpful way of composing the miniature narrative is to write the final line first, and see how swiftly and gracefully one can move to it."

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (in 1897) said: "A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amount of hard work is too severe for it."

Joseph Farley, editor of Ax Factory Review (I found the quote in Novel & Short Story Writer's Market 2000), says this: "A good story can work on a number of levels. A story can be a prose poem at heart that bases its success on language and imagery over plot. It can be a teaching tool that edifies the reader and editor. Or, it can be a damned good yarn."