Flash fiction, for the uninitiated, is exactly what it sounds like: fiction designed to be read quickly. For someone like me with a short attention span (which gets shorter by the day, it seems), it is ideal. All of the pieces that make up your favorite longer fiction are included in flash fiction. They can be humorous or serious, philosophical or ridiculous. Because of their brevity, the stories usually leave pieces for the reader to infer, which is particularly appealing for me --I like the opportunity to use my imagination and figure out the puzzle the writer has laid out for the reader.
Perhaps the most famous piece of flash fiction is Ernest Hemingway's apocryphal "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" (in case you weren't sure, yes, that is the entire story). Multitudes of meaning are contained in six words, and you, the reader, needed fewer than ten seconds to read it. Flash fiction is usually 1000 words or fewer, with the shortest examples readable in the blink of an eye.
The world is a little nutty right now (understatement). The 'flash' of flash fiction takes on new meaning in this new era. In addition to flash referring to how quick the stories are to read, there is another interpretation I've just considered: they are brief flickers, like shooting stars in the sky. During times when wonder is in short supply, the idea that you can have a story --ten stories, a hundred stories! --sparkling out there like little gems that you can collect and appreciate like the ephemera they are, it's a nice thought.
So here's one, an example, continuing with the theme:
Grandfather traces his finger across the night sky.
“Ursa Major. Find the edge of the pot and follow it across. There. That’s the North Star, Polaris. Polaris will always be north. The stars rotate with the seasons, but they don’t change their places in relation to one another. North will always be north, and you can always depend on the stars.”
Somewhere, down below the well-ordered constellations, at her grandfather’s side, the young girl looks away and watches the fireflies rearrange their points of light haphazardly in the dark.
Why don't you give it a try? And have a good night.