Writing Contest

They're gone! My entries for the annual Rose State Writer's Short Course competition are in the mail.

No more editing. No more rewrites. No more thinking and rethinking. Questioning, doubting, second-guessing.

"Heroes," my entry for Flash Fiction is my absolute favorite. It is my way of honoring all those mothers out there who allowed their children to do dangerous things because those things needed to be done. Like my friend Allegra's grandmother who let Allegra's mother take part in the lunch counter sit-ins in Oklahoma City in the late 50's and early 60's.

Flash Fiction is almost poetry. It must tell a whole story in two or fewer pages. That means the writer must use the absolutely, most evocative, right word -- Hemingway's mot juste. The writer must engage the reader's experiences, their sensory memories, their fears, their dreams, and their hopes. And, most importantly, the writer must trust the reader to be willing and able to participate as an involved reader.

"Dead Birds and Broken Bottles," is creative nonfiction -- a new field for me. The trick to creative nonfiction is that it has to be true. Somehow my personal experiences have just never seemed exciting enough or well-plotted without embellishment. Or they were too personal and I was not comfortable being a character in my own story. Or somebody would get their feelings hurt and get mad at me. It wouldn't be safe to accidentally meet them at the local Walmart.

Everyone, no matter where they live, has a weather or natural disaster story. And being from Oklahoma, tornadoes lend a certain excitement to my own memories. Living in a small town offers all kinds of interesting characters. So I had the excitement and the familiar characters for a nonfiction piece. Then the creative part was to turn the factual time-line into a plot.

This particular tornado happened more than half a century ago so most of the characters are dead now and not likely to show up at Walmart. I'm feeling relatively safe in that respect.

Then there's "The Girl in the Reeds." Those of you who know me, know that I am particularly fond of mysteries. Murder mysteries.

Because I am currently working on a follow-up novel to Murder on Ceres, a Science Fiction/Murder Mystery, I didn't want to take time away from it to spend days and weeks on a murder mystery for this competition. I decided to write a murder mystery short story.

Keeping in mind that Murder on Ceres started out as a short story, this was a dangerous undertaking. I didn't know if I could write a mystery in short story form. Short stories are generally 7,500 or fewer words. I'd written short stories before, but not murder mysteries. The question was could I construct an interesting puzzle and solve it within that number of words.

And, you know what? I did. (Here insert a vision of a white-haired sexagenarian doing a happy dance, whilst humming the Theme from Rocky.)

I am excited. I am pumped. Look out, Oklahoma. I'm on my way!