There is a world of difference between a 125,000-word novel and a flash of 50 words

Spending my days and nights with a close reading of the formatted text for my historical novel, "Zeppelins over Denver." Much of my adult life was spent writing and editing so this is just another in a long line of projects. But, the process is different with a 125,000-word novel. If that seems like a lot of words, it is. But they were composed one sentence, one paragraph, one page at a time. I write and revise short stories, which is a slightly different task. A short story may be 5,000 words. In 2025, flash fiction has taken over the litmags and I am pleased that I've publish a few in print mags and online. It's a neat exercise to write a story that's a page long and not pages. Some very talented writers taught me the way. The always-busy Meg Pokrass has shown me and others the way. I recently had a piece rejected by 50-Word-Story that I thought was pretty good for a 50-word-story. I had revised it from a 250-word story but maybe that was the problem. Sometimes a 250-word story just wants what it wants. 

Back to the novel. The story must be compelling and the characters memorable. The writing must be crisp. And very importantly, the text must be error-free. This is the challenge with a 125,000 word novel in this day of self-publishing. Traditional publishers used to employ editors and fact-checkers. They still do, I suppose, but I don't know for sure because I've never been published by one. I did have a st6oory reprinted in a Coffee House Press anthology, "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams." ML Liebler was the editor. I've also had a creative nonfiction piece published in a Norton anthology, "In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction." But my historical novel is not being published by a traditional press. Thus, the work must be done by the writer. That takes time and attention to detail, lots and lots of details. Since my book is historical fiction, this writer must pay attention to period detail in the case of 1919 Colorado. What did people wear and how did they speak? What models of automobiles were on the road? What was it like to fly a biplane? Many questions that I try to answer as best as I can. 

An editor must pay attention to detail. But it is inevitable that mistakes will slip in. One must forgive oneself in the end. Nobody's perfect. We try to be. AI is available. My MSN Word keeps bugging me about the CoPilot AI program. No thanks, I keep saying. Will that ever become a necessity in the publishing world? My daughter uses ChatGPT when writing her college papers. The professor says it is OK as long as it is noted. Good grief. I might have used it when tasked to compare and contrast the Early and Late English Romantic Poets. In fact, I may just go to CoPilot and propose this very topic, see what the bits-and-bytes say. It might be fun. 

Not sure how the late Dr. Alistair Duckworth might respond. 

Oh yes I do: Off with his head!

"Old Girls and Palm Trees" by Meg Pokrass is a dream

I am reviewing a new book today but first wanted to outline the pleasures and dangers of late-night reading on the Fourth of July weekend.

I've read about the gender gap among White American Male Literary Fiction Writers, notably novelists. Upstarts such as Salinger, Hemingway, and Updike seem to be a vanishing breed. Guys whom you can't wait to read. Guys that hog the bestseller charts. 

I made the mistake of choosing Marc Tracy's July 3 New York Times article for late-night reading. My wife Chris was asleep, or trying to get to sleep as fireworks exploded around us in Ormond Beach suburbia. A few hours earlier we'd joined friends for dinner at a Flagler Beach bistro with a view of the rickety old pier under reconstruction. Made me wonder about hurricane season. The sky burned red as we drove west toward home. Should have taken that as an omen.

"The Death and Life of the Straight White Man's Novel" was compelling reading. I am an old straight white man fiction writer who has published one story collection and written two as-yet-unpublished novels. I've published a number of short stories and a smattering of flash fiction and prose poetry. I left the corporate world to get my M.F.A. in creative writing. I wrote and raised a family while working full-time as an arts administrator, a rapidly dissolving field thanks to MAGA. Agents and editors will admit over late-night beers at writers' conferences that white guys aren't getting published because it's a new world out there, a new multigenerational, multiethnic, gender-neutral world out there. And young white guys are spending their 10,000 hours gaming and not sitting alone in a cafe populating their journals with trenchant observations. So suck it up, buttercup (what is a buttercup anyway? Must Google it). 

I am including a photo of a buttercup.

This buttercup looks happy. Or surprised. Or maybe it's surrendering. They can be poisonous and in the South they are seen as an invasive species. On the plus side, kids like to hold the flower up to their chins and the reflective petals turn skin the color of butter. Like butter!

Since I'm a buttercup, I ordered a nifty little chapbook by Meg Pokrass, "Old Girls and Palm Trees." Published by Bamboo Dart Press, a nifty little outfit with offices in Claremont, Calif. It's illustrated by artist Cooper Renner, who has a playful style. I tackled this book late at night and it pleased me. Meg is a writer friend I met a dozen years ago on Facebook who wasn't afraid to put her flash fiction on display for all the e-world to see. She's from California but now lives in Scotland. Many writers, me included, were a bit concerned about placing our work on social media. Into what dark and dreary and corporate place will it end up? Any Tom or Dick, Harry or Sally, can scoop it up and claim it as their own. That occurred to Meg but didn't faze her, probably because she is represented by crackerjack agent Peg Mokrass who sports huge eyeglasses and looks a bit like Meg. So here it is, years later, and Meg had published some 900 pieces in various mags and online sites. And she's published eight flash collections and two novellas. I brought her to Casper, Wyoming, in September 2014, as a presenter at the Equality State Book Festival.  

The book is delightful. Can a SWMW say delightful? I await your response.

Meg's book features flash pieces about her imagined life with an old friend in California. In the opening piece, she imagines this old friend behind her, "a friend who had become a shadow that needed to be sewn back on." I had to stop there because this is a scene from the black-and-white "Peter Pan" I grew up on. Peter loses his/her/their shadow and has to sew it back on. I watched my own shadow for weeks after that, afraid if it came off I wouldn't know how to sew it back on. I close my eyes and remember that feeling. I'm scared, but also aware that my shadow is a living thing with its own life. It may have turned me to writing, as my Mom read Peter Pan to us after and I saw that words were kind of like a shadow of life, that the writer has thoughts and it travels down the arm for finger to make imprints on the page. Did I think that at five? No, I am imagining that now. Something magical was going on, I knew that much. Somehow I understood that knowing how to read those shadow words could open up new worlds to me. I was a nuisance. I read everything: cereal boxes, candy wrappers, billboards, and eventually magazines and books. I am still a nuisance; any printed matter within reach is not safe. I can read upside-down like a noir detective. So much joy and heartache comes from reading and I wouldn't have it any other way.

There is joy and heartache on the pages of "Old Girls and Palm Trees." It is a dream, basically, and dreamily written. 

About the book: It's a chapbook, 6.5 x 6.5 inches. Well constructed, with a sturdy coated cover, and easy to carry on the Metro or to the beach (as we retirees do) in your E-Cycle or E-Tricycle basket. Nice gifts at $10.99. E-book version available but that kind of defeats the idea of having a nice little chapbook to carry around. As I mentioned, art is by Cooper Renner. Cover art by Meg and Dennis Callaci. 

Support small presses: www.bamboodartpress.com

A Writer Orders a Birthday Cake

She’s pretty but doesn’t know it yet or maybe she does, maybe her new spouse told her that this morning before she hustled off to a new job. But she’s still in college, I think, summer break from FSU, a job making and decorating cakes. Could be worse, with her skin, working out in the Florida sun in June. A head taller than the slight Indian woman in a sari she helps. The woman wants a birthday greeting on a whipped cream cake. She spells out her granddaughter’s name and the clerk writes it down, says that’s a pretty name and then admires the women’s shiny hoop bracelets. The clerk tries to write on whipped cream but it’s not going well and she summons the head baker, a white-clad bearded guy old enough to be her father. I think they would like to tell the customer that she might try another cake, you know, one of those solid bar cakes or maybe a sheet cake with buttercream frosting, the ones you can write on. They come up with a solution, placing a plastic oval over the cake and writing on that. A bald Indian man rolls by on his store scooter that matches the one I ride on. He speaks brusquely and then rolls past the doughnuts and disappears down an aisle. Minutes later he returns but the woman from India is patient and keeps at it. He rolls away again. The Indian man is about my age, maybe even younger. I want to be a watcher at the counter, quiet, as I wait to order my cake. The woman customer turns to me. She is beautiful and tells me that it’s her granddaughter’s birthday and she is 10. Happy birthday to her, I say, and she smiles. The baker and the clerk finish their work and I draw close to admire it. Pink greeting on clear plastic over a white cake. High art. She turns and leaves. I order a sheet cake for my siblings’ birthday. A quarter sheet? Enough for 25? The clerk isn’t sure, looks for the baker and he’s in the back and she fetches a cake from the cooler and shows it to me. I know it is not the size I want and I think she knows it too but then consults with the baker and he comes out and tells me it feeds 20 when you cut 2-inch-by-2-inch pieces. If it’s not enough, you can grab some of our cupcakes. He points to a table piled high with them. I like that solution. I order my cake, the clerk writes down the birthday greeting, and I leave them for the day, a day that will lead to other days and other stories. I pass the Indian woman on the cereal aisle. She smiles, raises the cake in a salute, and peers down the rows of Cheerios and Fruity Pebbles, looking for the bald man in the scooter.

Hair stylist at the Cancer Infusion Station

Lorna of the luxurious brown hair. The first time I saw her. Not a streak of grey in it. I knew it wouldn't last because she's right here in the Cancer Infusion Center waiting room. This is where hair goes to die so the patient can live even if it's a little bit longer. Lorna hasn't yet stopped at my station to talk about styling options or maybe a wig; we have orange and blue ones. Stylin' scarves too, and caps with funny sayings, funny to all of us anyway, women of the lost hair -- yeah me too, and mine grew back curly and seal brown with silver tips. "Kissed by the sun, I said. "Touch of grey" said my husband, a Jerry Garcia fan. "I will get by," the song goes. "I will survive." As the weeks went on I missed seeing Lorna and wondered if she'd given up. She finally came by, hair strands sticking up in a topknot and tied in a bow. Reminded me of Zippy the Pinhead from those days when hair meant everything. Lorna walked by alone, as always. "Like my hair?" She tended it with her right hand, twirled around so I could get a good look. We both laughed. I saw her weeks later, head shiny as a baby's bottom. "Just a comb-through," she said. I held up a bare hand. "Got my comb right here." For the first time, she cast her burden aside and sat in my chair. I massaged her scalp with some feel-good ointment that smells of lavender and vanilla. I feel the ridges of her skull beneath the hairless skin. Cancer started in her breasts -- they've been banished the damn troublemakers. Lorna and I reminisced about the touching that went with them. When done right, it lit us up. My touch on her bald head is one small thing, a tiny pleasure. Small things are what's left when the big things go.

Flash fiction, zeppelin style

The Loneliness of Zeppelin Denver

Zeppelin Denver was my name. Christened LZ-17 in August 1915 and only later did I get a proper name. One of many airships created in the early years of the twentieth century at the great zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen. My origin story showed promise. Finding a chum did not seem like a problem. There were so many new ships. Then came the war. We sailed off to Britain with as many bombs as we could carry. Hurled them from the gondola like Zeus's lightning bolts. Friends and potential partners were blown from the sky. LZ-24’s crew was killed but the ship stayed alive and and it motored off into a North Sea cloudbank. Engines stopped when the fuel ran out but it kept going, lifted by the winds, until it ended up in the Arctic, we suppose. Never found. He was my brother and best friend. Later, I was part of postwar reparations. The United States came to Germany's big rummage sale (all things must go!) and claimed me, naming me for an American city nobody in Germany or even the U.S. had ever heard of. I was off to America. Zep friends were built but it was not the same. My German accent got in the way. American zeps avoided me and then, in 1937, the Graf Zeppelin Hindenburg exploded and that’s all she wrote. Self-immolation was suspected, one of the first blows against Hitler, or so they say. I would not be surprised if GrafZepHin staged the farewell as he always was theatrical. It left me alone and heartsick sailing through the sky cleared of everything but clouds and aeroplanes. Many aeroplanes. They were the future and I was not. I sailed on. They kept me around through the next war, mostly as a curiosity. Spent a few years filming football stadiums from on high. But that was it. Dismantled me from the outside in. Skin peeled. Skeleton removed. Bled of helium. The heart was the last to go.

Welcome to the Poetry Hotel

Write short, said all the experts. Be concise. 

I first heard this advice as a student reporter for my university paper. Give me 500 words. Give me 750. Later, when I covered high school sports for a big city daily, I sometimes had to rush back to the office and knock out a piece in 15 minutes or file by phone or via the Jurassic fax machines of the 1970s. Keep it short. And for God's sake, get the score right. 

Naturally, I went on to write a novel and a passel of short stories which weren't very short. It was nice to have all those words to work with. A well-crafted short story can still be a challenge. You have to limit the number of characters and set the story in a few scenes. Still, a 5,000-word story gives you some room to breathe.

I've reached 106,000 words in 424 pages on the historical novel I'm writing now. I am not finished with the draft. Not sure what the final count will be before I query publishers. Much revising to do.

My latest published works are much shorter. They're prose poems featured in YU News Poetry Hotel, Paul Fericano prop. Five pieces. The longest is "Flying Nurse," which comes in at 340 words. The shortest is "Welcome to Zan Xlemente, Zalifornia" with 182 words. Each tells a story and might be labelled flash fiction if they were on another site. I don't see how it makes much difference if people read and enjoy them. Maybe not enjoy so much as make you think about worlds not your own. Read them at https://www.yunews.com/mike-shay-poetry-hotel.

A writer uses different techniques with each form. A novel requires expansion while a short-short involves winnowing. If a traditional short story is a slice of life, a short-short is a slice of a slice. Some of mine start life as a short piece and stays that way as I've said what I wanted to say. "Zan Xlemente" is an example. Some, however, start life as longer pieces that I take the scalpel to. "The Future of Surfing in Wyoming" started  as a multi-part story, "The History of Surfing in Wyoming." In it, I imagined the surf scene 1,000 years from now if global warming does its worst. I added rewritten versions of surf songs and turned it into a performance piece I presented at readings in Casper and Sheridan. It wasn't easy to transform a 4,000-word piece into one with a mere 252 words. Check it out on the Poetry Hotel site and see what you think. I'm in Room 66.

New Flash Fiction Review: "Welcome to Zan Xlemente, Zalifornia"

New Flash Fiction Review published one of my pieces April 27 in its "New Work" section online. It's a fairly new online mag with a wonderful group of editors: San Francisco's Meg Pokrass, the excellent Boston short story writer Pam Painter, Texas short-short fiction writer Tiff Holland, and advisory editor and anthologist James Thomas. I read on the W.W. Norton web site that James and his colleagues Robert Shepard coined the term "flash fiction." I met Meg Pokrass through Facebook. She's one of the few writers daring enough to feature new work on FB and ask for feedback. She talked about this experience, and read some of her work, on a snowy mid-September day at the 2014 Equality State Book Festival in Casper.

I consider myself a writer of short stories that aren't that short. Stories in my first published book are of traditional length and follow a structure similar to those penned by writers I've studied, everyone from Hemingway to Tobias Wolff.

But over the past 20 years, I've published three short pieces, including the one below. I had a 1,000-word piece in the Norton anthology, In Short: Brief Creative Nonfiction. I published a short-short called "Flying Nurse" in High Plains Register a few years ago. I've been writing short blog pieces here for ten years. In my youth, as editor and columnist for a Denver arts and entertainment weekly, I wrote columns that were 750-1,000 words. Most of my magazine and newspaper pieces have been fairly short, although I've also written some long-form mag pieces. Humor and satire, which I purport to write on these pages, is better short. It's challenging to write short. And fun. Which is why I'm going to stop right here, referring you to my latest flash fiction:    

WELCOME TO ZAN XLEMENTE, ZALIFORNIA 

My daughter M went to a nuthouse in San Clemente and all I got was this lousy metal keychain with CALIFORNIA writ large the blue of the sea under a gold-and-orange/red sun.

Read the rest at New Flash Fiction Review.