This week’s “Why Flash Fiction?” essay from Jennifer A. Howard discusses how puzzling over the world’s mysteries drives her flash. Submit your own “Why Flash Fiction?” article or other flash-related essays on our Submittable page!
By Jennifer A. Howard
Sometimes the ugly truth might be that I write flash because I’m super Midwestern or female or an INFJ and don’t want to take up too much of your time. At my worst, I don’t want to bother you at all or demand your attention for what might feel like too long. Performing as an artist with an audience, in which I’d have to dance or cello or juggle in front of you, would be an impossibility. Even reading my own work to a crowd of people can feel like a compromise more than a joy. Sorry, I’m going to read to you for a little.
And what have I got to say anyway?
But that dark feeling really only happens sometimes. Because most of the time, my writing flash, my writing, isn’t about you at all. The world is full of interestingness: right now I’m trying to figure out if the British drink more tea than we do because their kitchen outlets kick out more power and their electric kettles boil water more quickly. Could that be true, and what else in my life would change if my house were wired differently?
This investigation into plug adapters may or may not lead to an insightful meditation on love or parenting or language or time or bodies or habit or gender or history. Probably on its own, it won’t. I’ll have to track down three or four more leads first; post-its around me right now contain notes from Forensic Files and tweets about #Brexit and my nieces’ kid-syntax and translation apps and albino deer and this movie about an astrologer who turns around a 1970s basketball team, plus I’ve got a leaky faucet in my bathroom, which will require some research to figure out.
Because I do not know yet what I have to say. But things in the world need to be written down, feels like anyway, and the fun part is figuring out how to puzzle those irrelevant facts and wishes and gumdrop or grease-stain words together into a handful of sentences that follow each other and land somewhere honest. Often, that takes for-freaking-ever to figure, but how awful is it to be given a mystery and guess the solution right away? No fun at all: I want the game to last and last. I want to work, at least some, for the win.
Which is why I’m so grateful writing flash is not a performance art. I want tangling together a story to take a long enough time, so it feels like a case I’ve cracked, but I don’t want you to watch me guess and guess at where I’m going, to witness every time I get it wrong. That part is private. Here in the tip top of the Midwest, it’s me and a coffee pot that only needs 110 volts to spark and so much delete key and then once in a while a little solution on paper with a title you can take home with you and read. You know, if you want to.
Jennifer A. Howard teaches creative writing and edits Passages North at Northern Michigan University. Her collection of flash sci-fi, You on Mars, will be published by The Cupboard in the spring.
A SmokeLong Summer 24!