Memoirous

  Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. Mel G. 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent# I have read this book twice, and highlighted extensively. As a new memoir writer who works in slice of life and brief moments, I find her approach helpful. Highly recommend to all writers of memoir. Enjoyable read! Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir, available through CreateSpace and as an eBook available EVERYWHERE. Order it today.* *The link takes you to Amazon, but also available through other online retailers

 National English honor Society: https://www.nehs.us/writing/challenge.shtml Continuing with the success of last year’s Poetry Challenge in mind, the NEHS writing challenge for the 2020-2021 school year will be Flash Fiction in multiple, brief forms. Writers will be challenged to create narratives that make impacts on readers using very limited words or characters. While some view the form as a relatively new phenomenon, brief fiction dates from centuries ago in ancient tales including Aesop’s Fables. Many famous authors, including Hemingway, Vonnegut, Chopin, among others, have written flash fiction, albeit under a variety of names. In the UK June 6 is celebrated as National Flash Fiction Day. https://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/ Start conjuring up now entries! There is still time for YOUTH to submit to this: https://fingerscommatoes.wordpress.com/nffd-youth/ NFFD Youth Competition About the 2021 NFFD Youth Competition: Submission period: 15 February to 15 April 2021 unpubli...

Blink Ink http://www.blink-ink.org/ Home to the finest in contemporary 50 word fiction. Archived in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, Blink Ink is a quarterly print journal publishing the best in stories of approximately 50 words since 2009. The current prompt or theme is water. http://www.blink-ink.org/submissions/ Journal of Compressed Arts http://matterpress.com/journal/ https://matter.submittable.com/submit The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is a non-profit publisher of compressed creative arts, such as micro fiction, flash fiction, prose poetry, compressed poetry & visual arts, and whatever other forms compression might take. Matter pays authors $50 for their accepted pieces. We publish weekly bursts of compression & decompression and make as many varied word-plays on matter as we can. We also blog at FlashFiction.Net .   Though submissions are currently closed until mid-September they do something called topical Thurs...

Check out a new flash piece at Syndrome magazine online. Ever wonder if what you're doing or experiencing now will one day become obsolete --Imagine no birthday candles https://thesyndromemag.com/cant-hold-a-candle-to-this/

StalkyReader 5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Create Without It! November 21, 2017 Format: Kindle Edition While Jane Hertenstein’s book Flash Memoir is ostensibly geared toward writers, this book is a must-have for anyone who is creating art of any kind. Filled with amazing historical factoids (check out Hemingway’s lost valise or Wordsworth’s almost-permanent houseguest, Samuel Coleridge) as well as the writer’s personal examples of following her own advice, the main thrust of the book is to get the reader’s creativity flowing, and boy howdy, the author succeeds at that. I would highly and enthusiastically recommend Flash Memoirs for writers, artists, photographers, fabric-art creators, poets, gem artisans, musicians, and everyone else who is using their creativity to explore and understand the world. Creating is tough. It’s hard. But Ms. Hertenstein hands anyone who reads her book a skeleton key to the treasure chests of imagination that all of us possess. Mich...

Flash Fiction and the Holidays The Yuletide season is a perfect time to write flash memoir. 1)       We have no time to write a gajillion words, so keep it simple and small, haiku Christmas! Remember Dicken’s A Christmas Carol was one of his shortest and MOST popular stories, The best things come in small packages. 2)       So MUCH material is generated by dysfunctional families, Christmas feast disasters, Gift of the Magi moments. We all have memories conjured by this festive/unfestive time of the year. So I have some ideas I’ll share with you this week as we head into Thanksgiving—which launches us into Black Friday and the Advent Season. My first tip is to come to a class I’ll be facilitating at OCWW in Winnetka. Jane Hertenstein - Holiday Flash When December 20, 2018 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM Location Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave., Winnetka IL Registration Guest – $20.00 Member – $10.0...

1)  A Very Short Story Contest It may be apocryphal, but the story goes that Ernest Hemingway won a bet by writing a short story that ran fewer than ten words. One version of the story places the bet at the famed Algonquin round table. Whether true or not, there is an actual bet-winning short story attributed to Hemingway: For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn. You have to admit it's pretty good. It builds, and there’s a whole world of background and emotion lurking beneath those words. We would like to make a similar bet with you. Write a great short story in ten words or fewer. (You may use a title, but that goes into the word count.) Submit it to our contest. Entry is free. Winner of the bet gets a free Gotham 10-week workshop.  2)   The Arcanist! We’re a new Medium-based literary magazine that focuses on fantasy and sci-fi flash fiction. We love magical worlds full of dragons and speculative looks at the future, and we think these two genres are important to ou...

PLACES TO SUBMIT Splicikty, post complete http://splickety.com/submission-guidelines/upcoming-themes/ The Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest The Bumblebee looks soft and cuddly but hides a venomous sting.  Entice us with your inviting prose that serves up a pointed ending in 750 words or fewer.  Want feedback on your story?  Get a professional critique from one of the Pulp Literature editors for only $15 more. Contest opens:  1 January 2017 Deadline:  15  February 2017 Winner notified:  15 March 2017 Winner published in:  Issue 15, Summer 2017 Prize:  $300 Entry fee: $15 Earlybird fee (before 15 January): $10 Entry fees include a 1-year digital subscription to Pulp Literature. This contest is for previously unpublished works of fiction up to 750 words in length.  Total entries limited to 300. Flash mystery http://flashbangmysteries.com/submissions/ https://freezeframefiction.submittable.com/submit 1000 or ...

87 Bedford We’ll take any great story that can be classified under the umbrella of commercial or genre fiction (romance, mystery, crime, etc). What gets us excited is speculative fiction in all its guises (fantasy, science-fiction, magic realism, surrealism, slipstream, urban fantasy, horror, steampunk, silk punk, cyberpunk, etc). Flash Fiction We define flash fiction as stories between 500 to 1000 words. Submitted stories that fall within these limits will automatically be classified as flash. Just like a great short story, a great piece of flash ought to impress us with finesse throughout its entirety, instead of hinging solely on an unexpected twist at the end. Micro Fiction For a bigger (or smaller) challenge, send us a work of micro fiction (less than 100 words). Be sure it still tells a “complete story” that has a beginning-middle-end with conflict and resolution. M...

Hey! I'm using large and obnoxious text to let all my fans and devoted readers and people who happen to stumble onto my blog: TODAY thru Friday you can order 2 of my most recent e-books   http://tinyurl.com/nlrvq2f http://tinyurl.com/omh79ao at Amazon for the sale price of 2 for $2. Usually Affirmations is $3.99 and Freeze Frame is $2.99 but for 58 hours only you can get both for less than $2. If you use Facebook get the word out to your writing students and writing teachers.  It's a back-to-school special! (Even if you're not taking classes--we all need affirmation and encouragement.)

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Liars' League NYC reading August 4th. I wasn't able to make it to hear my piece  Fungus Among Us being read by Heather Lee Rogers BUT--ta-da--it is now up live as a podcast. Go HERE to select my story and others read that evening. Invisible: Williamsburg, Brooklyn 2015, by Jennifer Sears Trace, by Aimee Mepham In Character, by Cedrick Mendoza-Tolentino Rendez-vous, by Gus Ginsburg Past It All , by Wendy Russ  Going, by Christopher Green Gasoline, by Navid Saedi Melon Mall, by Jeanette Topar The End of Summer and Other Things, by Ingrid Jendrzejewski The theme was short & sweet, meaning flash fiction, so none of the readings is much longer than 7 or 8 minutes. Their next theme is Crimes & Misdemeanors and the deadline is August 31st. Why not submit! ? pic of Heather reading Fungus Among Us              

Check out an upcoming event in New York City. Liars’ League takes place at 7pm on the first Wednesday of every other month at KGB Bar in the East Village. Liars’ League NYC was founded in 2012. Selected stories are performed in front of a live audience featuring trained actors reading original short stories by emerging and established writers. Stories are also available via podcast at iTunes Store and Stitcher .  The event is scheduled for Wednesday, August 5th -  Short & Sweet - Flash Fiction. My story is a flash memoir piece titled: Fungus Among Us. Please share link=especially if you live in NYC or Brooklyn! http://www.liarsleaguenyc.com/

Flash Fiction Contest: Nat. Brut F I R S T  P L A C E    includes a $200 prize and the winner's entry will be included in Issue Five. S E C O N D  P L A C E   includes a $50 prize, and the winner's entry will be included on the  Nat. Brut Blog . T H I R D  P L A C E   winner's entry will be included on the NB blog and will receive a T-Shirt. InkTears International Short Story Competition 2014 The Prize There are six prizes which will be awarded by the InkTears judging panel: •     Winner: £1,000 •     Runner-up: £100 •     4x Highly Commended: £25 Submissions must be a short story between 1,000 to 3,500 words in length, written in English. Any theme is acceptable.   The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize is a writing competition sponsored by the stage and radio series,...

Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. Flash is generally anywhere between 1,500 words to as few as 66 (I've seen 6-word memoirs!). Since I began exploring the genre I've had over 30 flashes published. Lately I've also been teaching Flash Memoir. so this how-to book is a summation of my process, the approach I take to flush out a flash. Even if you are only interested in flash, or only in memoir, or only in fiction--I believe there is something in this small book that you can take away. Order  Freeze Frame: How To Write Flash Memoir TODAY! If everyone who visits my blog downloads a copy I will become a millionaire and I promise to flash about it.

Today I trekked up to Winnetka to OCWW (Off-Campus Writers Workshop) in the cold, misty half-snow half-rain. I know, a lot of dreary weather adjectives. It was a multiple weather adjective day. Christine Sneed was speaking. I’d heard her at a AWP panel in 2012 talk about organizing short story collections. Her talk today was about the short story and so I submitted a manuscript and, surprise, mine was selected for the workshop. It’s something I’ve submitted around, but haven’t had any takers on yet. The class really liked it and there were some key suggestions on improving it! Lately I’ve been feeling invisible. I’m sure this all ties in with my artistic insecurities, but truthfully writing more and more seems like a young person’s world. Christine touched on this. She said she was somewhat of a late bloomer. Or maybe that she’d blossomed and it took a decade for people to notice. Anyway, for women of a certain age, we’re easily looked over. Part of it is: I don’t look v...

Friends, Family, Fellow Bloggers, Reviewers     Flash Fiction (Kentucky Flash) will be available free by download on Amazon this weekend, November 10 and 11 . Click here! * FREE d ownload for Kindle users In addition I have a PDF or epub for you to download if interested in publicizing the release (or my story!!)   The story is called “The Arrowhead” and is an excerpt from my YA manuscript of a forthcoming book, CLOUD OF WITNESSES—more news on this later.   Thanks so much—hope to hear from some of you. Always interested in feedback here at Memoirous.