Flash Workshop, The South

Great morning, taking a flash fiction workshop for The South writing association. THE SOUTH WEBSITE HERE

Six buzzy writers included two MA students, a writer who had travelled all the way from Cambridge for the workshop, another from Hastings way who is targetting women's magazines and wants to write coffee break fiction, a local writer whose quirky funny pieces I have heard at Short Fuse, and a lady who said she couldn't write really... then produced some beautiful lyrical work seemingly easily!

I looked at flash writing as a process and as a product.

Under 'process' we did several exercises to loosen up, wrote to prompts, took characters and ideas that had festered in drawers or on hard drives ofr a while and gave them an airing. We looked at generating prompts... poetry, image, music.

We looked at a selection of published and/or prizewinning flashes, including 'Plaits' by Tania Hershman, work by Steve Almond from Smokelong Quarterly, and another piece by Bruce Holland Rogers, also from Smokelong.

We looked at what makes a successful piee of flash fiction and ran through the fiction elements while they used work they had done ea rlier and made notes on how thay might edit to strengthen.

Markets, submissions, strategies to bust writers block, then talk about the two Brighton flash events coming up... Jo Horsman's Sparks and the Short Fuse Slam... all in three hours.

Phew.

Some ideas for you flashers:

Sparks. Upstairs at Three and Ten, Brighton, 11 November, 20.00 £5.00 entry. Flash subs for Sparks to sparksbrighton@hotmail.co.uk

Short Fuse Slam, 20 November, Komedia bar, Brighton, 20.30 start. £4.00 entry. No subs, take your work along and cross your fingers. Raucous short story face off, with game show vibe, local author judges, glittering prizes, clap-o-meter and more! Theme - "Fancy!"

RUNNING A FLASH WRITING WORKSHOP

Yesterday morning I spent three hours in the company of eleven seriously buzzy writers, taking a Flash Fiction Workshop for The South, a writing organisation based in Brighton.

Link to The South HERE

My objectives were to send the participants away with some new tools in their 'writer's toolbox'. To revisit the elements of fiction, and look how the focus sharpens for flash fiction. To send them away with at least three strong pieces of writing for them to work on, and market information so they could, if they wished, submit them for consideration. And to show them how flashwriting as a process is a fantastic tool in itself for writing in general.

It was a very busy session, and I was delighted at the results. Particularly the look on almost every face, when, after the fist exercise . (SO simple, SO easy to do) they said 'Wow. That is simply extraordinary. I don't write like that, normally..."

The images, connections, the prose... all surprised them.. And me!

If I have one single phrase that pushes me on it's this:

"If your writing doesn't surprise you, then it sure as hell ain't going to surprise anyone else..."

In the end, half the group stayed on with me after the session officially finished. We were having such a good time. I tell you... I will never be rich at this game. But I will be happy.

FLASHING!

I'm taking a morning workshop at The South, turning people into flashers in three hours.


Can't wait!

WORKSHOP INFO HERE