The Smallest Stories Set the Biggest Fires
Join us TODAY for 6 weeks of microflash! Find out how bright, pressurized sparks do what longer forms can’t: compressing image, ache, revelation, and possibility into a single, unforgettable breath
“Get in. Get out. Don’t linger. Go on.” — Raymond Carver
Today we dive into our newest intensive for paid members, The Infinite Small: A Mircoflash Revolution!
If you are already a paid member of Writing in the Dark, you have full access to this intensive (and all of our other intensives) and you can ignore the upgrade buttons below—those invitations are for the vast majority of WITD subscribers who are free (we love you all so much!!, but for free subscribers, upgrading is necessary to participate in the intensives).
Six microflash craft essays, six extraordinary writing exercises, and six invitations that help writers break out of the same old, same old.
Join community members in the comments, sharing work, celebrating successes, mulling challenges, and transforming our writing together—all in tiny doses.
And now, let’s get tiny!
We’ll start with a very micro-memoir by Beth Ann Fennelly that actually made me gasp.1 When a writer can do that in 130 words, I pay attention, because I want to be able to do that, too!
But, wait, why do I want to write something powerfully small when I am primarily a long-form prose writer? Because all writing is made up of parts. A book is made up of sections which are made up of chapters which are made up of paragraphs which are made up of sentences which are made up of words which are made of of letters which represent sounds.
All of those parts matter.
The stronger my letters/sounds, the stronger my words. The stronger my words, the stronger my sentences. The stronger my sentences, the stronger my paragraphs. The stronger my paragraphs, the stronger my chapters. The stronger my chapters, the stronger my sections. The stronger my sections, the stronger my books.
Learning the power of the prose on the micro level changes everything else, too. I think of challenging myself with microflash being similar to doing power reps for my writing muscles.
Microflash fun, and it is tough. It asks a writer to create the full-fledged weather