Nancy Stohlman and two Flash Fiction Events coming to Portland Nov 19-20!

On November 15, 2013November 16, 2013 By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Nancy Stohlman is coming to Portland for 2 Flash Fiction events next week!

Tuesday, Nov 19, 7 pm: Figures of Speech Reading Series with Nancy Stohlman and Kirsten Rian
In Other Words Feminist Community Center
Corner of N Killingsworth and Williams
web site: http://inotherwords.org/
www.figuresofspeechpdx.wordpress.com

FREE!

Wednesday, Nov 20, 6-8 pm: Flash Fiction For Poets Workshop

Flash forms have arrived as backlash to genre boundaries and flash fiction is leading the pack, redefining how we tell stories. By embracing the compressed form, writers are cultivating a new set of skills and creating an entirely new kind of story. In this workshop we will generate original flash pieces, examine what makes successful flash fiction, and try to differentiate flash from its cousin, the prose poem. This workshop is open to writers with all levels of experience in the form.

World Cup Coffee Meeting Room.
World Cup is located on the corner of NW Glisan and 18th ave.
Web site is: http://worldcupcoffee.com/taxonomy/term/1

Limited workshop spaces. To register email: slw1057@hotmail.com

Flashnano Pep Talk/Writing Flash Fiction: What You Don’t Say Is The Story

On October 30, 2013March 25, 2018 By nancystohlmanIn Uncategorized7 Comments

In the month of November, in solidarity with our Nanowrimo friends, we’ll attempt to write 30 flash fiction stories in 30 days.

So you’re going to try your hand at this flash fiction thing, huh?

In the beginning you will still very often land closer to the 1,000-word cut-off mark, trimming and pruning to make sure your story makes it into the official flash fiction guidelines. As you become more comfortable with the form you will find that your stories naturally shrink and start to land well beneath the 1,000-word mark.

What happens in between is a process of letting go.

First of all, let go of being good at it. Whether you come from poetry, longer fiction or nonfiction, it takes a while to get used to the new form. So let go of the need to be an instant expert. So many of us find it frustrating to “start over” and embrace being a beginner in a new genre. I invite you to instead see it as an opportunity.

Let go of exposition. We have become fond of our exposition techniques, our lush, sardonic, witty, poignant, clever, or otherwise expository voices. This is often the first thing to let go of in flash. It doesn’t mean you must let go of it altogether, but your urgent storytelling voice must trump your love of exposition for the magic to happen.

Let go of description. Not all together, but let your description come only in service of your storytelling. Let go of the urge to linger. In flash fiction, one well-placed detail brings an entire story into focus. Opt for one or two telling details over a wash of description—you just don’t have that kind of time.

Let your silences become informative. Don’t rush to fill them. As we learn to let go of exposition and description, we learn to embrace silence as a tool, and the juxtaposition of silences to infer information.

Let go of extra words. Try removing words and see if you can create potent gaps of intuition. See how much you can not say. Often what you don’t say is the story.

So what’s left you ask?

What’s left is tightly crafted little nugget of concentrated gold.

What’s left is flash fiction.

~Nancy Stohlman

Check here for daily Flashnano Prompts during November.

Join our Facebook Event page here.

Launching Your Book Into the World

On October 23, 2013October 23, 2013 By nancystohlmanIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

LAUNCHING YOUR BOOK INTO THE WORLD

Individualized Coaching To Help Your Work Succeed!

You wrote the book…so you’re done, right? Wrong. Whether you are self-publishing, traditional publishing, or still undecided, today’s market requires that writers build and sustain their own readership. But how? Who are your readers? Who needs your book? And how do you find them? Personalized coaching can help you uncover blocks to self-promotion, give you practical skills to approaching the market as a professional, and help you understand and take the necessary steps to not just writing a book but building a long term audience for your work. Individualized coaching will explore:

• The difference between an amateur and a professional
• Who are your readers and how do you find them?
• Self-promotion: Are you avoiding it? (You’re not alone)
• Publication—is your manuscript ready to send into the world?
• Building a long-term fan base
• Creatively marketing your work
• What’s keeping you from taking the next steps?

Your work is worth it. Give your book the greatest chance of succeeding!

4 and 8-week individualized coaching packages tailored to you and your work.

Contact nancystohlman@gmail.com to discuss your needs.

To your success!

Nancy

Your Success Is Mine and Mine is Yours

On September 4, 2013September 4, 2013 By nancystohlmanIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

As an artist, I walk a path that has been smoothed by others. If I take an easy step, it’s because someone before me has been kind enough to move a rock out of the way. And each rock I move on my journey leaves the road a little clearer for you.

What if we all stopped and really embraced this idea for a moment? What if, instead of feeding the fear, the jealousy, the insecurity, and the competition, we wrote ourselves a new story of mutual success?

Unfortunately most of us operate from a vantage point of scarcity. Writers live in a very real world where publishing houses are folding, or merging, a gazillion books are being written and published every year, and every year we are faced with a new study about how few people read books. We’ve been conditioned to believe that by this time next year there will be only one reader left on the whole planet…and she’s dying.

So if I’m living in the scarcity paradigm, then your success is a direct threat to my own.

But what if this isn’t the only story?

We’re storytellers, after all. We are writers and artists and painters and musicians—our job is to create ideas that weren’t there before. So what if we created a new story? A story that says there are enough readers/fans/audiences for all of us?

What if we created a story that said every reader you recruit is a reader for the collective? What if every book I sell is a potential reader for you? What if, as a collaborating community, we can rebuild our dying readership and infect the world with our love of words?

If I step out of my fears, the ones that say there isn’t enough for us all, then your success can only support mine and my success is in service of yours. And like a perfect partnership we take turns: I teach, you learn. I learn, you inspire. I surprise, you applaud. I applaud, you dazzle.

We are traveling a well-worn road, and every one of us owes our successes to someone before us. In return, we share our successes with those who follow. Applause is contagious, after all, and when one of us wins, we all win.

Together, we can create a new story.