YAHOO!

My work e-mail account was beginning to be clogged with my new hobby--namely, with submission information, feedback from one of the editors of an on-line journal, and messages and critiques back and forth from Julie Shapiro, the woman who gave the flash fiction workshop at SCWC20. I was starting to worry that I would lose important work messages in the mix, so I knew something had to be done.

Therefore, two nights ago I opened a Yahoo e-mail account, strictly for on-line flash fiction submissions. It feels kind of cool to have an e-mail account strictly for my writing.

The key is going to be not to get too obsessed with checking it a million times a day.

LET'S RUMBLE

When you submit a story to a print journal, you stamp the envelope and make sure there's an SASE inside and then you send it off. After you slide the manila envelope into the slot, you wait three to four months to get your rejection slip that you put in the shoebox with all the others.

If you're lucky, and someone took a shine to your story, you get a handwritten "Try us again" or "Sorry to disappoint you on this one."

Those notes are gold!

I submitted my first piece of flash fiction to the on-line journal rumble on Tuesday, February 28th. It was a piece I'd written specifically as a flash called "Lockdown," about a teacher who is experiencing a lockdown drill in her classroom, but since there was no forewarning, she isn't sure if it's real or not.I sent it in about 7:30 a.m.,just before work, using my work e-mail account.

By 9:30 the editor had e-mailed me back and said he got the submission and, based on an initial reading, he thought the ending should be more "wry, sarcastic, or surprising."

I couldn't believe it. Feedback on my story in less than two hours. Amazing.

So I e-mailed back and asked if I should revise and re-submit or just take my chances. In less than another two hours, he'd responded again. He said the submissions wouldn't make their way to the editors for another few weeks, so I had time to play around with the ending and re-submit.

Dialogue with an editor and a chance to revise and resubmit based on editorial feedback.

Miraculous.

NEWS "FLASH"

Over President's weekend, I attended the Southern California Writers Conference held at the Hanalei Hotel in Mission Valley. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about how to make my writing better. Here are some highlights:

* The agent I signed up to see, Kristin Nelson, did not make the conference, so they kicked me over to another agent, Scott Miller with Trident Media Group (They rep. Janet Eavonovich). When he pulled my pages out of the stack, I saw he'd written "Good Writing" on the front. He said Godtalk wasn't his cup of tea, but that he could see an agent being interested. He also gave me valuable feedback about the writing style.

* Met another very nice agent, Regina Brooks, from Serendipity Literary Agency in Brooklyn. I pitched her Godtalk (based on a two sentence pitch I wrote in a workshop on pitching earlier in the day) and she said she'd read the first three chapters. I'm cleaning those up right now. I should be able to send them by the end of next week. I e-queried Kristin Nelson when I got back from the conference. I'd like to see what she says, but I'm not going to keep Regina Brooks waiting.

* The very first workshop I took was on Flash Fiction. I walked in thinking "I know Flash Fiction: 1200 words. 1500 words. Short Shorts. Brian's Bride. Etc." But the workshop presenter, Julie Ann Shapiro, said, "No. Flash pieces are always under 1,000 words and usually between 500-750 words. They have all the elements of fiction (exposition, inciting moment, rising action, climax, denoument, conclusion), but all within a limited word count. When she read some samples (of her flashes and others), I was hooked. Then we wrote one. She said she submits (and has been published) in on-line journals that specialize in flash fiction. When I got home I checked them out. I'd had something of an attitude about on-line journals when I first checked them out five or six years ago, saw them as not much more than glorified blogs, but the good news is that they've grown up! Real writers writing real stories. People I've heard of are publishing there. I couldn't wait until I could get a few pieces together and send them out. There was a harmonic convergence in my heart and mind (the details I will spread over several more posts) and I know this is something I'm supposed to be doing. It encompasses everything I love about writing, all at the same time! For starters, let's talk about no postage charges and no SASEs! How about them apples?

However, since flash fiction consists of writing a dynamite piece of writing in a small space, and that was exactly what I was attempting to do with this blog, the days of slave2themuse may be numbered. Although I may just shorten the posts to keep the world up-to-date on my new exploits in flash fiction. That will start, I suppose, with the next post.

The greatest thing about attending the writers conference for the third time, though, is that I am surrounded by people who have the same illness I have and it just feels good to know that I'm not crazy and that I'm not the only one.