Publication Alert: Life in 10 Minutes

Dear Reader,

Well, talk about a surprise this morning.

Here I was, doing my semi-routine check on submission statuses (I've been sending a lot of work out lately -- hurrah submissions!), when on a whim I wandered over to the Life in 10 Minutes website and saw that the flash fiction piece I submitted to them recently was published last week.

Ironically, the piece is called "Realization."

I discovered Life in 10 Minutes only a few weeks ago, but I'm already an adoring fan. For this blog-style venue, the concept is simple: what can you express, invent, indulge in, or confess in a matter of ten minutes? Form can be almost anything -- fiction, non-fiction, poetry -- so long as it's "flash," spur-of-the-moment writing. I used to despise the idea of flash-anything, but over the years I've seen how the condensed space and (in this case) the time constraint gives one permission to freely explore the emotional aspect of the piece -- the moment-ism -- without getting caught up in details of structure. Once in awhile, it's good to shut off that analytical side of the brain, and just let go.

You can read "Realization" here.

About the work: There is a whirlwind of emotions surrounding this little publication. I am, of course, surprised and excited at the news of another publication, and also slightly flabbergasted to see that someone took a liking to my attempt at flash-fiction -- which can be a delightful bridge between poetry and prose, by the way. (The single-sentence, stream-of-consciousness style here is probably also indicative of my current Virginia Woolf obsession.) But it occurred to me, after I did my initial inner hurrah-another-published-story dance, that this is actually a significant milestone for me as a writer.

I've been trying to write a lot this summer, and although I haven't mastered it as a daily habit, I've been steadily producing at least one solid piece a week. It's frightening, sometimes, trying to approach the craft independently without a professor or deadlines to keep me in line. Occasionally I find myself staring at a new poem or story, wondering if it's any good, or if I'm incapable of producing publishable work on my own.

What makes the publication of "Realization" important to me is the fact that it was a summer project, something I wrote independently outside of any academic setting. Aside from this blog and its appearance on Writers Get Together, it is my first published creative piece that I wrote, edited, sent out, and had accepted entirely on my own (rather quickly, too), without feedback from a teacher or fellow writers. It took trusting my own judgement to know it was well-written, well-edited, and presentable work. It was a leap of faith, and somehow I made it. Few things have felt as validating as this.

I hope you enjoy the piece, and I hope to have more independent work to share with you soon.

Grace and peace to you.