Dreamwalkers, welcome to a new Creative Conversation with author, artist, and workshop presenter Margaret Kellermann! This Dreamwalk is a trip into Flash Fiction. Margaret is teaching two workshops on Zoom this fall at Cal Poly Humboldt, including The Key to Writing Flash Fiction. Registration is now open to everyone 18 and up, wherever you live. More on the workshops later.

J: Hi Margaret. I’d like you to finish the sentence “Flash Fiction is . . .

M: Hi Janet! Thanks for inviting me here again. I really enjoy this kind of verbal exercise workout called Dreamwalks you’ve created. I would say that flash fiction is a thin slice of a story. Also known as microfiction, it’s the shortest kind of prose, maybe 50 or 100 words in all. A whole page, if you’re feeling verbose. Writing a work of flash fiction leaves you feeling you’ve run a hundred-yard dash with hurdles: breathless, happy you’ve done it, having had just a few seconds to view your surroundings before it’s over.

J: Sounds invigorating and challenging. Can flash fiction be nonfiction or . . .

M: For me, there’s so much freedom in this kind of writing. If people don’t “allow” nonfiction in flash fiction, they should invent a genre called flash nonfiction. But whether it’s nonfiction or fiction, it’s all your story.

J: What are some ways you dive in?

M: You know how archaeologists dig down into layers, going deeper in. They go one slice, one layer at a time. If they could (in an altered dimension!) turn that mountain on its side and see it sliced, neatly layered, it would reveal a timeline. Then whatever era they wanted to investigate, they could examine that slice. In a similar way, with flash fiction, I tell a slice of a story I want to investigate without dealing with the usual beginning or end.

I’ve been thinking about fairy tales today. Here, I’ll tell one tale in two sentences: “Rapunzel was unhappy up in her tower ever since the prince had been hanging out under her window. She thought about what she could do, absentmindedly braiding her long, long hair.” It’s titled “Why Ladders Were Invented.”

J: Love this story! I like how flash fiction draws the reader in without wasting any words.

M: To dive into writing a story, I suggest, “Start in the middle.” I notice on The Moth Radio Hour on NPR, storytellers often start with the word “So.” That one word is a great way to help the storyteller and the audience understand we’re already inside the story, not needing a lot of preliminary information. Don’t begin by listing what you had for breakfast. Start 10 minutes later: “So I was walking down the street when a baby skunk approached me.” That kind of thing.

J: Do you ever use photos or memories to leap in?

M: Yes, definitely photos and memories. Recently, I wrote a very short piece – flash nonfiction, if you like – where I dispense with commas to make it a bit more like poetry:

Old Chair Dog Park

On a hill overlooking the bay locals drop off their old chairs. Over the course of weeks and months those chairs disappear and other chairs replace them. Dog owners sit around in the office chairs and dining chairs and barstools every day unaware the whole scene resembles a moveable art piece.

J: That small mystery of chairs appearing and disappearing gives me a feeling of the shortness of this life (just my immediate response). Maybe a flash fiction story can hit you like a poem and leave a feeling or an impression.

M: Absolutely, no question about it. Hey Janet, how would you like to try some flash fiction of about 50 words or so? I can give you a prompt. The prompt can be the title if you like.

J: I’ve never done flash fiction. I’ll jump in.

M: Great and brave of you. Okay, the prompt is, “You’re Going the Right Way.” You can see it handwritten neatly on this beach tire.

J: So, she came across this retired tire and sat in the sand. People were telling her to retire. Get off the writing road. Lie down and rest and let the sand cover her. She was more than her shadow, and she wasn’t ready to lie down.

M: So beautiful. So haunting: She was more than her shadow and she wasn’t ready to lie down. [Tears.]

J: Thanks, Margaret. The words just flowed. The evocative photo gave me a great jumping-off place.

M: How do you feel now? Did it help move something, a block, maybe?

J: I feel like I’m more than my shadow. Thanks for the little bit of freewheeling.

M: “I’m more than my shadow” is something Carl Jung wishes he’d written.

On the lighter but still serious side, I’d like to share with you a bit of flash fiction I wrote this morning during my quiet time:

There was once a fair maiden, because as we have been educated since childhood there is no room even in fairy tales, much less this world’s kingdom, no room for the plain middle-aged woman except in supporting roles as anti-fair, anti-maiden: either a catty, conniving stepmother or the witch, or both as one character.

J: That about sums it up! What does Hamlet say? The purpose of putting on a play is “to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature.” Stories do the same. So the question is – what mirror am I holding up to my life? Do I want to check the mirror before trying to see myself in it? Hm . . .

M: Good question. The mirror was a bit too honest for “Snow White’s” evil queen’s taste.

J: Ha! The too honest mirror. So, when we are writing stories long or short, we are making mirrors?

M: Yes! I remember an elderly neighbor, a former monk, who often wandered the blocks during the day and went back to his memory care unit at night (!), saying to me, “There are so many mirrors in our lives. I wonder if there’s one for us?”

J: You know what I’m going to say. There’s a story there, Margaret. Though you may have already written it, knowing you.

M: I’d like to finish with a question for you, Janet. If you wrote your next novel in bits of flash fiction like you just did there with the tire, how would it change your writing?

J: I do tend to write short bits each session. And I dive in deep using whatever image calls to me in the scene. Writing in flashes might feel . . . scattered?

M: Yes, Janet, in your novels, there’s a long thread that weaves through chapters without breaking. You work on that one thread of a story for years! In contrast, three of my novels including Annie California Book One are in the form of fictional journals. With a journal style, I leap from day to day without connecting entries. I need to trust the reader to make those journal leaps. So, it’s natural for me to use flash fiction, in a sense, for each entry.

J: Interesting to see how flash fiction can become an approach to novel writing! I did something similar in Wenny Has Wings – very freeing. Can you tell us a bit about the upcoming flash fiction course you’ll be teaching? I think I might want to dive in myself, and there may be more Dreamwalkers here who’d like to give it a try.

M: You know I’d love to see you and everyone else there. The more, the merrier. Or, as dogs at dog parks might say: The more, the terrier. I have two upcoming courses online. The Key to Writing Flash Fiction on November 5. We’ll be writing microfiction in class. And I’m teaching Sketch Your Window Views October 26. (Workshops are $30 for members, more for non-members.)

J: Thank you so much for joining me in this Creative Conversation, Margaret. You always open new doors in my mind. So, the title of your course is apt. Blessings to you– Janet.

M: Blessings to you, Janet! You’ve created a new subgenre here – not interviews but true Creative Conversations – and I hope others emulate it for conversations online.

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