So, not having the creative writers training background, I frequently discover things I suspect many writers have known for a long time, but are new to me. I lament not, for discovering what others already know is part of mastering a craft.  FeiOna mentioned Flash Fiction Friday in a recent journal entry and I think it is such a delightful sounding idea that I've put it down as a Friday task. The idea is to whip out a fictional work (in a single sitting, so to speak) and make it public in its raw form.

I've written things like that and they are either buried away or I've gone back and refined, rewritten, and revised to polish them up, but the greatest joy was in the initial sitting, the creative ecstasy of the thing demanding manifestation materializing into the world. My life-mate is reading Dorothy Sayers "Mind of the Maker" and I'm itching to get my paws on it when she finishes it. I read a passage where Sayers expounds upon the need for the thing being made to come into the world, and how it is a nearly irresistible urging for the writer. I know the feeling. It is the ecstasy of saying "yes" to the idea and then watching as the idea takes physical form through your hand -- sometimes as if you aren't even thinking it, as if you are merely part of the medium, a puppet, the strings of which are held by the concept itching to be known. There is a joy in making that knows no equal save the touch of the Divine.

I think that an exercise that gives me the permission to announce "it is finished" after the last period on the first draft would do me some good. I may not always be able to do my FFF task on Friday, but the goal would be to get in a flash fiction exercise sometime during the week. Of course FA will suffer the consequences, but you won't have me to blame: I didn't invent the idea, I'm merely part of its manifestation.