Five Years of The Art of Flash Fiction: Reflections, a Prompt, and a Special Offer
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
-
Flash fiction
15 min read
The entire article centers on flash fiction as a literary form. Readers would benefit from understanding its history, defining characteristics, word count conventions, and how it differs from other short prose forms like the short story and microfiction.
-
Joan Didion
15 min read
The article quotes Didion's famous line about writing to discover what one thinks. Understanding Didion's influential career as an essayist, novelist, and cultural critic provides context for why her perspective on writing carries weight in literary communities.
-
Mark Van Doren
12 min read
The article opens with and reflects on Van Doren's quote about teaching as 'assisting discovery.' Van Doren was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and legendary Columbia professor who taught Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Thomas Merton, making his pedagogy philosophy historically significant.
Reflection in the closet doors of my study.
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” ~Mark Van Doren
Friends, this November newsletter goes out to all subscribers and contains a special offer, links to some of my most popular posts, and further down, a new prompt for you to try!
But first, a few thoughts as I close in on five years of writing The Art of Flash Fiction:
I began this newsletter on a whim on New Year’s Eve, 2020. It was borne from a feeling of restlessness, and a desire to do something new. I think the fraught loneliness of the pandemic had lots of us feeling a need to draw our people closer somehow. I wanted to forge new connections and community amongst those of us who love the unique power and beauty of the flash form. Also, by then I’d been writing and teaching flash for twenty years and I had some things to say about it!
To date, I’ve published 223 newsletters, I’ve reached well over 10,000 subscribers, and The Art of Flash has become a longtime Top 10 Fiction Bestseller here on Substack (thank you!). It’s been a fun and fulfilling endeavor for me and I hope, inspiring and useful for you as well.
Writing The Art of Flash has shown me the art of teaching. I love this quote by Mark Van Doren: “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” I feel my role has primarily been that of showing writers their own unique gifts and helping them mine for the rich stories only they can tell. I was so happy to get this endorsement from a paid subscriber which speaks to all I aim for in my newsletter and teaching:
“Kathy, I support your work because it has moved me out of a stuck spot and given me a roadmap for the direction I’d like to steer my writing in the future. Your 3 classes really awakened in me a kind of confidence in what I already know and how much there is still to learn.”
Joan Didion famously said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” This has been my experience, too. Writing these weekly posts has become a meditative practice for me. It’s forced me to get clear about what I believe flash is and is not, what I
...This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.