Confessions of a Flash Junkie
Mary Estrada
When flashquake invited me to guest edit, they explained that I would join one of three teams of editors who read and critique the four hundred submissions the journal receives each quarter. No problem. I've workshopped stories for the last several years. Reviewing is second nature to me now.
I would also need to produce an editor's essay — something related to the writer's life — also no problem. Producing the essay was three months down the road and by then time could stop; the earth could shift on its axis; or I could develop a writer's life.
I am the middle-aged mother of a large family. Writing flash stories is my guilty secret and peculiar addiction. I started about four years ago with the premise that writing ultra-short fiction could be a way to teach myself narrative structure and the basics of clean, unembellished story telling. Besides, between work and putting out the usual domestic fires, there was no time to write anything longer, and I had developed a terrible desire to arrange words in pretty patterns.
At first it was easy — I joined Pam Casto's Flash Fiction Workshop, wedged a computer between our bed and the dresser and hid the keyboard in a drawer. Stealing a few minutes here and there to write, edit, and critique was simple. Within a few months there was a cream colored folder full of finished stories, tightly written fussy-jewel-box pieces. God — how I loved them!
Well-intentioned friends started pressuring me to submit my stories, but I was established as a word miser, so I moved to a less demanding workshop. I continued to write daily, sometimes early in the morning, but more often in the middle of the night — the only time when this Temple of Doom/Taco Palace is quiet. The folder got plump with completed work and began to fray at the edges.
In July of this year one of my daughters got married. For several months prior to this blessed event there was no time to write anything. Instead, I coordinated lists, cleaned, sewed, arranged flowers and baked. I obsessed over every tulle-wrapped, candle-lit detail.
My chest hurt all the time. My hands shook.
The day after the wedding I crawled out of bed and penciled a poem on a folded paper towel. I'd never written a poem before, but my new in-laws were arriving at noon to feast on pozole, and I needed a word fix fast. Apparently the scent of boiling pork and hominy was inspiring because words fit together quickly, and the pain began to recede.
In August, I made up for lost time. It seemed like a good idea. I wrote a flash a day. The car stayed parked in the driveway. Groceries were not purchased. Laundry was not washed. My family rationed leftover wedding cake and turned their underwear inside out to get an extra day of use. Some of them packed their backpacks and went back to college, where life is sweet and meals are served at regular intervals. The cat died. I spent whole days at the keyboard, slept feverish hours and awoke completely refreshed. My husband started dating the secretary who brought him breakfast tacos. (He saved the chorizo ones for me. We've been together a long time.) My eleven-year-old got a tattoo. I was distressed for a half an hour, and then the first line of the next story came to me.
By September, one fat folder had multiplied to become two folders of completed stories. Every flat surface in Villa Estrada was piled with overdue library books, baskets of laundry and unpaid bills. Flowers wilted in dusty vases, tiers of half-eaten wedding cake rotted in Dickensian splendor, and a pack of feral dogs prowled the wilderness that had once been our backyard.
Then I began editing for flashquake.
Your stories arrived in my e-mailbox in anonymous blocks of ten. You opened your files and sent in your mirrored gardens, your first loves, your freight trains, snowy hillsides and alien sunsets. I was dazzled and jealous.
Who are you people?
You cut and pasted your despair- your thoughts of suicide- your rape at sixteen-stories of intoxication, murder and terrible loss.
How can you bear to let go of your words?
I bet your socks are all in pairs, and your gardens are weeded, mulched and planted with next Spring's tulips.
Your carefully crafted work rescued me. I agonized over your prose- struggled to figure out your intentions- marveled at your ability to release something beloved into the electronic void. You've taught me the virtue of submission-the value of vulnerability. I'm grateful for the lesson and the opportunity Flashquake gave me to learn it.
I sent out three stories this morning. It felt awful. I hear it gets better with practice.
Writers write. Writers edit. Writers submit. This is a writer's life.