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Postcard Fiction

I’ve heard of flash fiction and very short shorts. But today I learned that flash fiction can be broken down into a whole other slew of sub-genres and tiny word counts.

  • A drabble: 100 words
  • Nanofiction: 55 words (these are complete stories, people)
  • And, my favorite…Hint fiction: 25 words (if you think you’re up to this type of challenge, here’s a contest)

On SheWrites.com, several women writers have formed a group: Flash and Micro/Fiction & Nonfiction. Each week there is a theme, and contributors post their best very, very short stories. You have to be a SheWrites member to participate, but SheWrites is a great resource for and community of women writers.

This week’s theme: Postcard fiction, 250 words or less. What can you write in 250 words?

In 246 words, here’s my story (and I’m sticking to it):

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She didn’t look so old three days ago.

I stopped by her apartment after work for our usual Wednesday evening coffee date. She just got back from her mall walking and said she had gotten an eye-full at the Victoria’s Secret display.

“I don’t think their hardware could hold together much of my old body.” She laughed hard. “I’d be a nightmare in satin!”

She talked, while she buzzed around the kitchen. She washed out a juice glass and her favorite coffee cup. She grabbed a cup for me and turned on “the tea kettle.” She dropped a few teaspoons of Foldgers in our cups, then topped the grinds with sugar.

“I put a little extra sugar in yours, honey. I know you like it sweet. That water’ll be hot any minute now.”

She was vibrant as she danced in and out of the late afternoon sunlight that streamed through her patio doors.

But now, laying there in the hospital bed, she looked old. Her hair had gone white. It was gray before, but now it was definitely white. And the skin on her arms seemed looser. Maybe it was always that way, and I just never noticed.

I pulled back the sheet and found her hand. Ice cold. I lifted it to my cheek to try and warm her fingers. She breathed deep.

“Is that you, honey? Is it Wednesday already?”

She turned to me. I smiled and tried to hide the fear in my eyes.

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Put pen to paper, please.

I recently browsed onto this article at Time online by Claire Suddath about the dying art of handwriting. Claire Suddath writes that the take over of technology has caused schools to decrease the amount of good quality time teaching penmanship.

Learn to read, learn to keyboard, but don’t worry about learning to write a long letter. If you want to contact your Senator, just send an email. You don’t even need to master your own signature. Petitions are all online these days, too, and checks — archaic.

Still, with all the artists and writers in the world, handwriting must exist. Part of my writer-esque includes a life-long search for the perfect journal and the perfect pen. If I’m going to write out my worst insanity, I want it to look good on paper. And, I spend a significant amount of time analyzing calendars and mechanical pencils at the start of a new year, debating over the authority in a 0.7mm versus a 0.5mm pencil. I stare for hours at an aisle of sharpies in every color of the rainbow.

Writers and artists aren’t alone in their craft of handwriting. I can recognize an architect in a second from numbers and letters alone. My son received a birthday party invitation in the mail a few weeks ago. I expected childlike writing. But, when I opened it, I thought parent and architect. The numbers were drawn in one fluid movement and the “what, when and where” was spelled out in squared and angled capital letters. My hunch was confirmed when my son brought home his light saber party favor, made from a swim noodle, an exacto knife, and various colors of duct tape.

Even Claire Suddath acknowledges that handwriting is critical in certain professions. She mentions the thousands of deaths that occur because of doctors’ illegible writing on charts and scripts. I’m drawn to the fact that all doctors sign the same. No matter their name, the signature starts with a few rises and falls, then flatlines. Do they teach that in medical school?

“Handwriting” and “defunct” must never be in the same sentence. I pledge to write a “thinking of you” note to someone at least once a month. Maybe once a week. Because next thing you know, I’ll stumble onto an article about the demise of the US Postal Service.

I mean, I like evite invitations and e-cards. They’re cute. They keep the graphic artists in business. But, I look forward to the slam of the mail slot around 11am every day. My heart jumps when I see a small envelope, addressed to me, in my best friend’s or my dad’s handwriting. A little pen to paper can make my whole day.

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Where do you sit?

Last week, I picked up a copy of the Writer’s Digest yearbook issue on novel writing.

Inside is an excerpt, entitled Status Seekers and Storytellers from a book called Fire In Fiction by Donald Maass.

Status seekers: “those whose desire is to be published.”

Storytellers: “those whose passion is to spin stories.”

I read the definitions and how the career of each category of writer might play out. And I asked myself, which am I?

Last year, my desire to write (outside my journal) surfaced yet again. This time I couldn’t –wouldn’t– brush it off. I took a few classes with Ariel Gore and wrote several pieces of which I am proud. I submitted some of those stories out into the real world and received several no’s and one yes.

I keep writing, because I love to write. Like my husband loves to run. He never wins first place in the marathon, but he seaches online for the next race as often as I search online for another opportunity to submit. I’m almost forty. I figure, why not? And I think, what’s a story if no one reads it?

I’m not sure if that makes me a status seeker or a storyteller.

Where ever I sit on that continuum, Donald Maass’s words remind me not to get caught up in the publishing frenzy. They compel me to take it slow, focus on the craft.

Because, as Margaret Atwood says in Negotiating with the Dead, A Writer on Writing:

…Everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger. The latter takes a good deal more stamina and persistence.