#nffd

[iheartfailure]

June 16 is National Flash Fiction Day in England and I’m part of it in a small way. Check out the full story here and the read the rest of the flood as the stories come in. http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/2018/06/first-day-of-spring-by-jesse-bradley.html?m=1 #nffd2018 #nffd #flashfiction #fiction #eldercare

[fourthlinebestline]

REILLY SMITH MAKES IT 3-2

[sonyaoldwin-blog]

Forgot to post the link to my latest FlashFlood story, didn’t I?

[elizabethlovatt]

My super short story 'The Magnolia Tree' is part of National Flash Fiction Day!

[theflashnificents]

National Flash Fiction Day

It's National Flash Fiction Day, so get scribbling! It doesn't matter what you're writing about as long as you're doing some!

[tropicalsmoothiecafect-blog]

Come take a photo in our giant flipflop! #campsunshine #jettypunch #nffd #flipflopday

[mixtapemethodology]

Made Up Culture

Essay by Zach Roddis

    The best we can think of are Radstewart, Joanna Gruesome, Elvis Depressedly, and Guantanamo Baywatch. I'm sipping coffee in a not-for-profit arts cafe in central Manchester with some of my best friends. We discuss pun-based band names, books and songs. 

It is the twenty-first of June 2014, and I’ve just finished performing at my book launch; I self-published a book of tweets and held the launch in a zine library housed in said cafe. It is National Flash Fiction Day or NFFD if you wanna be concise. NFFD is timely as my good friend and fellow writer, Fat Roland, has two great short fiction books and is supporting me at the book launch. We discuss the immediacy of pop music and the fandom surrounding Justin Bieber and One Direction (among other topics). 

The coffee leaves froth behind on the sides of the mug. Having just been involved in the literature event we will eventually go our separate ways. One of us will go and see an interactive play at an abandoned building. One of us will go and see a band called Glass Animals at a reasonably well-known venue (a band that I've already seen – a long time ago when they supported Telepathe in a smaller venue). One of us will go to an all-dayer and watch Hot Shorts, the musical project of writer Chris Killen. I end up going to a DIY show at a comic store. 

All of this is relevant because it is the culture that is in the air, rather than it being attributed to any single journey that day. The comic store will host three bands including We Came Out Like Tigers. It's on the same street as the arts cafe I am currently paused in. All of these journeys take place in the square mile that surrounds. Out of everything, it's the feeling that live music can exist anywhere that resonates the most. The Do-It-Yourself nature of any one day, any series of events in the same place, is of priority at a time when the punk scene comes under criticism from some individuals and on some blogs. 

The good things are in the moments, they aren't in the details. The good thing isn't my book, it isn't the day itself, and it isn't any one band, promoter, or performer. The following things are positive: the words spilled out of the mouths of the people reading, the noises made by the violin, drums, guitars and vocal chords of the bands, and the appearance of all of this where it has not been present before. 

Any band can play a bar or venue, but not every band has played in a comic store or at a house show. I feel like similar things are true of the current attitudes in poetry and live literature in the UK at the moment. So many poets I know complain that not enough people care about poetry. They say this in conversation, online, and whilst performing on stage. I often feel like replying by saying something like; “if you want to take poetry to more people, stop performing at poetry nights and in places where you know half of the audience already – seriously, where is the fun in that?”

I don't say that, of course, I just agree and continue to write. All of this becomes unnecessary as the notes play, as the words are spoken, as the coffee cools, as the atmosphere gathers, as the pressure is released from a can of beer, as the pages are turned, as the rooms occupy genuine and heartfelt art. I only hope this kind of thing can happen more often. 

☊

Zach Roddis is a 23 year old human person and poetry guy based in Manchester, UK.

[theflashnificents]

The first major step I took in my career as a writer (other than choosing Creative Writing as a degree) was starting up a flash fiction blog with some of my fellow writers at university. We became ...

THE FLASHNIFICENTS. In this post to mark National Flash Fiction Day, AntoshFlash explains our noble origins and thanks the man who inspired us all.