Last Thursday, rather late to the party, I signed up to attend the Flash Fiction Festival for just one day – it was absolutely brilliant and I wished I had realised earlier that it was on. I would have attend the whole weekend, from Friday 7th July until Sunday 10th, but as you know, if you read my last post, I’m already committed to a week long online course with Mslexia Novel School starting tomorrow (11th July) and I thought I would not be able to cope with a full weekend ahead of that.
The Flash Fiction Festival was full on with some terrific workshops, readings, panel discussions and other activities (I missed out on the karaoke on Friday night but I’ll be there next year!) The house was a perfect venue with beautiful grounds in which to relax or explore. Lots of trees for shade which was needed this year.
The first workshop I did was with Kathy Hoyle from WritersHQ She ran a fast and furious session when participants had to pick a genre out of a hat — hopefully one they didn’t normally write in — two opposing prompts given: ACCIDENTALLY v ON PURPOSE. We were then given twenty minutes to write a story of up to 500 words. By the way, a ‘Flash Face Off’ is run each week on their website. Kathy Hoyle was an enthusiastic and energetic workshop leader and brought out the very best in us…I even ‘won’ a book because I stood up and read out my short piece, which was okay but will benefit from some editing and a better ending! I picked Magic and Myth from the bowl, definitely not my usual choice of genre!
After a coffee break everyone took part in a ‘Word Cricket’ session with Vannessa Gebbie. She started us off with a sentence and we began, with instruction to write quickly and continuously. Every now and then she threw us a random word and we had to immediately insert it into our writing. I had done this before and it’s great fun. It’s amazing the variety of stories that can be created in a very short time.
I absolutely loved the second workshop I attended with Carrie Etter she was a brilliant facilitator. The title of the workshop was ‘Writing the Prose Poetry Sequence or Series’. It was an hour and a half long and it flew by. I could have done a whole day without any problem. She introduced us to a couple of prose series, the first was from Nina Andrews’ The Book of Orgasms (Bloodaxe, 2003) I thought I might feel uncomfortable with this subject, but no, they are light hearted and very clever. I laughed a lot and even read one out loud when asked. Great fun. Sorry I can’t find a link to share these poems. The second example Carrie gave us was from Hilda Sheehan’s debut pamphlet, Frances and Martine (Dancing Girl, 2014). Another series of amusing prose poetry with anecdotes about two middle aged friends. You can get a glimpse here .
We were given the chance to think about and create our own series of prose poems. The idea was to create say three prose poems using one of the following prompts: The Gaze, The Kiss or The Whisper. For example if you chose the kiss you might think of writing the following poems: The Kiss at the Barrier, The Kiss of the Reptile and the Kiss of Death. Get it? The option to expand is endless.
We then went on to talk about Prose Poetry Series, which differ from the above because each poem continues from the poem that comes before it. The example we worked from was Rosmarie Waldrop’s White Is a Color (Guillemot, 2017. It’s 19 short prose poems that tell the story of the speaker’s husband’s fall and recovery. It’s very good.
I am enthused to create some of my own prose poetry series or sequence…watch this space.
During the afternoon I attended a panel on Writing Historical Novellas-in-flash. A very interesting discussion and informative. I was never quite sure what constitutes a novella-in-flash. I thought it had to be a series of flash fiction stories that stood alone but with a story arc. I learnt that each flash-fiction should not exceed 1000 words —but they sometimes do — they don’t ALL have to stand alone but usually a good percentage of them do. There doesn’t have to be a story arc but there should be some connection between them. This is what I now understand, but I’m sure others will say something different. It seemed to me that the ‘rules’ are there to be broken.
My last workshop of the day was with Michael Loveday, ‘Writing the Novella-in-flash: Developing your characters’. I have to admit to being pretty exhausted by this point and could not really focus as well as I had earlier in the day. But, it was a good workshop and Michael gave us all several handouts to take way and use at home. Thank goodness ….I’m going to use his many tips for getting deep into my fictional characters. I think the worksheets might come in handy for my novel school next week!
I’m going to leave you with this photograph… how and why do you think that little yellow duck ended up on the top of the dresser? I have no idea but my eyes kept being drawn to it during one workshop.
