Flash fiction – read my winning 127 word story below
I belong to the NZ Society of Authors for the fellowship and their commitment to free speech. Having attended my first Auckland branch meeting in December, I was pleased to receive the details for the first 2017 meeting.
The invite included a monthly members’ competition, to write a poem or flash fiction story of fewer than 150 words on the topic “Playing at ‘god’, with a small g”. I had an instant sense of what I could write; typed, slept on it, tweaked and sent off the entry.
I enjoyed Friday’s meeting, especially author Stephanie Johnson‘s witty wisdom on writing novels but had to leave before the competition result. The following morning, I got a voice message from the member who’d arranged the contest to say my entry was the winner.
As I’m in foothills of my second novel, squinting up at the mountain of a task ahead, positive feedback, like a fistful of scroggin, is essential and motivating. Thank you Auckland NZ Society of Authors.
This is my winning 127 word flash fiction short short story. If you want to share it please link rather than copying, thanks.
Playing at ‘god’
She wrote in the darkness, carving words until light bled into the page. Where there had been a gnawing void, she created; the tick of time, the sprinkle of starlight and the swell of ocean. She described the land and wove in the details of tussock grass and restive trees. Between the trees and the waves she laid words for birds and fish and animals, finding nouns to name them and verbs to move them around the world. At the end of the week dialogue hung in her nib, waiting for a mouth. She wrote a man but his voice droned on about his accomplishments until even she was tired of them so she crossed him out and wrote a woman instead. It was time for action.
© Katherine Dewar, 2017
Feedback welcome in the form below. You can listen to the kind feedback from the NZ Society of Authors Auckland judge in the recording here >
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Katherine Dewar 