About

I discovered flash writing back in 2009. I was a Creative Writing undergrad at the time, and while I loved short stories, I wanted to try something different. A friend repurposed a poem to send to Six Sentences; I read her work and was determined to write my own. And I did:

• Fresh Words
• Without You
• Coming of Age
• Rind

I loved being constrained to six sentences, so I looked for further limits to impose on my work. I found The World's Shortest Stories and pushed myself to complete a story in 55 words. This inspired me to create a weekly series of Sippable Stories (currently not available online), which featured photos of micro fiction written on a chalkboard coffee mug.

As a Creative Writing instructor with elementary and middle school students, I continued to implement the short short story as a way to push students to get past their writers' block. Giving them a prompt, a word limit, and often a time limit made them spring into action and start writing. They often found that what they wrote in that time was actually good, and they then spent time polishing the piece or developing it into something longer.

Though I continued to work in literary fields like librarianship, education, and with an indie publisher, I found that I didn't have the desire or stamina for my own creative writing. Hence my renewed interest in flash fiction. 

Lightning Flash was created for fun, to serve as an online workbook of my creative exercises. It is by no means a professional portfolio, though you can find that here. I wake up every weekday morning and write a short piece. I then look through my photography portfolio to find an appropriate image or take a new picture if I have something in mind.

Sometimes I write about whatever comes to mind, though sometimes I do a week of # words, and I'm always open to writing prompts if you want to share a title or concept in the comments.

This blog isn't just a way for me to get my writing out into the world; I'm also studying flash and micro fiction since I never specifically covered it in school. You can find my reading list on the Resources page.