In praise of flash fiction

I am not a big fan of ‘national days’. They flow so thick and fast that I develop a protective shell against them, like calcium round an old boiler pipe. National penguin day, national broccoli day ( I may have made that one up) and national talk-like-a-pirate day (which I did not) leave me cold, and slightly enervated.

A couple of weeks ago, just after I had written a post entitled Which 1000 words  I came across the 1000words project. The project encourages people to write a story of between 100 and 1000 words in response to a photographic image. If you have a few moments to spare, why not visit the archive of submissions so far here? This celebration of word and image in powerful and ingenious combination sets all my creative nerves tingling and I hope to contribute once submissions open again soon.

The 1000 words project forms part of the National Flash Diction Day umbrella, whose site you can find here. If you click on the image below, it will take you to an archive of stories, none of them more than 1000 words long. To invest a few moments in reading them may just be the best mental stimulus to start your day. Go on – put down the coffee and pick up a story – who knows where it might lead you? Stories are part of the warp and weft of human civilization.  In them we find ourselves, lose ourselves, and occasionally meet ourselves coming back the other way wearing a different hat.

Why not have a look? After all – National Flash Fiction day comes but once a year!

Image:nationalflashfictionday