The lockdown blog: day 9

 Today feels like the day when sh** starts to get real again. Or is it just Monday blues? 

Life is catching up and the jobs, emails and calls that need to be made have come back to haunt me. At the same time my heart begins to beat a little faster. If there was a heart monitor plugged into me from the Christmas period until now, today would be the day that the doctors and nurses throw up their hats in celebration and relief as the cadaver starts to show life. The stuffed turkey begins to shift and the lady is a-leaping. 

I have begun researching in earnest-- or as earnest as one can be with a remnant mashed potato brain of Christmas-- the subject of Flash Fiction and am acquainting myself with the work of Lydia Davis. I will be teaching a five week term in this course to teenagers, beginning in early February. It is a Saturday gig and the course description proclaims: 

"Two golden rules of writing are ‘Always leave the reader wanting more’ and ‘Edit, edit, edit’. Flash fiction will show you exactly how to do that!" 

Based on this rather unnerving description, I have elicited that: 

a) I should 'edit' more

b) I shall be learning as much as I teach, probably in greater quantities.

If I was to edit the above sentence it would read "I'll learn more than I teach".

'I'll' is a contraction. Lydia Davis says:

.....because, they said, I was lazy. What they meant by lazy was that I used too many contractions: for instance, I would not write out in full the words cannot and will not, but instead contracted them to can’t and won’t.

Plot spoiler. Lydia Davis was not denied a writing prize for using too many contractions. It came to her in a dream and she thought it would have been "very funny" if she had. Yes, yes it would have. 

First lesson for the students: 

-Flash fiction is not lazy fiction, It just isn't.

- Contractions are not lazy writing, they just aren't. 


Any other pro tips for flash fiction lessons, hit me up. Don't worry, you're not under contract and that isn't short for contraction. How many contractions have I just used in that sentence?

xoxo contractions are fun


Comments

  1. Drniallmoore@aol.comJanuary 12, 2021 at 10:29 PM

    Pheebs - zig-zagging your way through a field of daises enticing the
    Reader to wander with you...! Thank you

    ReplyDelete

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