Hot Flash Friday: sketches

Because I’m trying to read authors from Maine see Artweek, I stumbled upon an old copy of Country Byways by Sarah Orne Jewett published 1881. I’d read a long time ago Country of the Pointed Firs so I was familiar with Jewett. She has a very interesting personal history and is recognized as an outstanding regional writer, though lately her work has not received a lot of interest. Byways according to Wiki is described as “sketches.”

Again, I was familiar with this term. Louisa May Alcott wrote Hospital Sketches (1863) about her experience working as a Union nurse during the Civil War. Her literary hero, Charles Dickens wrote Sketches by Boz (1839). Sketches to me seem like an early form of blog posts. From Wiki: A sketch story, literary sketch or simply sketch, is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a short story, and contains very little, if any, plot. The genre was invented in the 16th century in England, as a result of increasing public interest in realistic depictions of "exotic" locales.^[1] The term was most popularly-used in the late nineteenth century. As a literary work, it is also often referred to simply as the sketch.^[2] A sketch story is a hybrid form. It may contain little or no plot, instead describing impressions of people or places, and is often informal in tone.^[1]

For Hot Flash Friday why not attempt a sketch, your impressions. Compose an impressionistic scene, a loose rendition of a recent experience or memory, or a quick jot from your travels.

Just now I am making up a book which is to come out in the fall -- called Country By-Ways. It is mostly sketches of country life -- and of my own country life. So far I have simply tried to write down pictures of what I see -- but by and by I am going to say some things I have thought about those pictures. I don't know whether the pictures or the meditations will seem truest, but I know that I have found out some bits of truth for myself --
    Letter from Sarah Orne Jewett to Theophilus Parsons, 12 June 1881

Right now, write!