Finding Your People
the importance of community
Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash
Hi friends,
I’m writing to you from Bristol, UK, home of the annual Flash Fiction Festival. Every time I return to this wonderful place I’m struck by how much it feels like a family reunion. How quickly we reconnect and feel utterly at ease with each other. And how nice to attend a writers’ conference in which not once, not ever, are you asked, “So what is flash fiction?” We all know! We all love it, write it, read it, and want to learn how to perfect our craft. Here, we have truly “found our tribe.”
It serves all writers to find their community and seek ways to actively engage with it. This can take many forms, but social media, for better or for worse, is a great place to start. Buy and read books. Attend readings (live or on Zoom). Write book reviews. Volunteer to read for a litmag. Start your own live or in person critique group. Take workshops (a few writers’ groups got their start in my workshops, actually!) Writing can be a lonely business and it’s largely work we do alone, but find your people, encourage and commiserate, give and receive feedback, share information, laugh, cry, do karaoke late into the night. (You’ll do all of this if you take part in the flash fiction festival! I can’t recommend it highly enough.)
YOUR PROMPT
Write a flash that involves a character for whom a new friendship saves him in some small or large way. If you can make it funny and moving both I will love you forever.
Incorporate the following words:
pepper
golden lab
peculiar
lip balm
rain
cemetery
If you write something to this prompt, I’d love to read it! Feel free to share in the comments.
The Art of Flash Fiction now has well over 5,000 subscribers. It represents a significant amount of work for me each month, but I love doing it, and I’m still very keen to keep it FREE for all. If you have found these craft articles, writing prompts, and recommended readings useful, and you’d like to support my work in some small, tangible way, I would be most grateful if you’d click on the link below. And if you can’t, that’s fine too! I am very thankful for your continued and enthusiastic interest in what I have to say about the form I love so much.
Title: An Angel…Just in Time
Sitting at my family’s cemetery plot, I was contemplating my future. It has been six months since cancer took you. We had eight years of bliss, followed by two years of sorrow and pain.
Even the weather has been painful. No rain for over a hundred days. I am on my fifth stick of lip balm. A smile crossed my lips and it hurt my cracked lips.
It all didn’t matter any longer, and it would be over soon. I wanted them to find me here to let them know I cared about you so much.
I had to take the pills soon since I only had half a bottle of water left. I thought I had cried my last tear but was about to add to that ocean. That’s when I heard an awful whining close by. My plan would have to wait while I solved the current mystery.
She was cradled up against a nearby large tombstone. As I approached, she lifted her leg as if to wave me over. She started whimpering as I got close. She was a golden lab mixed with what looked like Queensland heeler. She tried to roll over, but the pain was too much for her. She looked like she might have been hit by a car, but what surprised me is that her tail was wagging.
She reminded me of my first dog, “Pepper,” who was with me until the last day of high school. She had a habit of lying too close to the road and got hit by a passing car. I didn’t know what to do, and she died crying in my arms. Maybe that is why I became a veterinarian. I could service other animals but resisted having one of my own, as the pain of separation was just too much.
I touched her head, and she closed her eyes, placing her leg on my arm. I stroked her head and heard her blow out a sigh.
I cupped my hand and gave her the last of my water.
*.*.*
That was two years ago. Now we are the best of companions. When we visit the cemetery, she still has the habit of lifting her front leg. Maybe it’s a wave, a thank you, or just a memory of her being alone and in pain. Now it puts a smile on my face, which doesn’t hurt anymore, as the monsoons have given us more than our share of rain.
What’s peculiar is that every time we are here, it makes me think of what would have happened if she wasn’t here that day. I still wonder if she was here for me to save her, or was she sent to save me?
I decided it was best to believe she was the Angel sent to save me. She does have blonde hair like my wife’s.
Things happen the way they are supposed to!
Lovely. Very true. Re-stacked this. Everyone should read it. I just wrote on this topic as well:
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/writers-versus-the-world
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/