For all New Zealand writers who haven’t heard, the NZ Flash Fiction Competition for 2014 is open. You have about a month to enter this competition. For guidelines, click on the following link. It’s open to New Zealand citizens and residents.
http://nationalflash.wordpress.com/competition/
I love writing Flash Fiction. I like the discipline of choosing words carefully, making each one count. Not that I’m good at it at all, I simply get pleasure from writing it. This is so different from the daily writing I do here on my blog and other sites, where my thoughts spill onto the page without much precision at all. It’s definitely time for me to be disciplined again. If you’re at all interested in some of my ramblings the link below is as good a place as any to start.
http://www.bubblews.com/news/2886864-the-200-word-challenge-was-simply-a-warm-up
So, my thinking cap is on, my pencils sharpened, paper at hand – I’m ready to write.
Writing Your Stories 
Val, years ago I was a technical writer for a high tech financial magazine. I was paid by the word, and you better believe I learned to strip the unnecessary words. Just the facts, ma’am.
And we’ve all had the experience of reading along and then the author gets carried away overly describing something or going off on a philosophical spout. I usually skim past.
It sounds like the flash fiction writing is meant to make stronger writers.
Thanks for stopping by. Yes, I rather njoy writing flash fiction, but it does take a lot of discipline.
When I was teaching creative writing I would give a theme with a word count of 500 then the next week, ask for the same piece as 300 but losing nothing of it’s essence. We may even try to get it down to 200 but you can go too far! 🙂
Editing is an art which most journalists seem to have lost. Professional editors are now so poorly educated that they will pass words such as ‘brackish’ which means a mixture of salt and fresh water, when the author has used it to mean stagnant. And how many times have I read the hilarious, ‘…she lay prone and looked at the stars…’? Prone, of course, means face down 🙂