How did you first come to writing flash fiction? What is it about the form that resonates?
I started writing flash fiction when I started attending free generative writing sessions online. These sessions taught me to have faith in my creativity, that it would always be available to me. I had fun producing little snippets from random prompts and wanted to learn to craft them into stories that I could share. I love creating a small moment and then seeing what I can find inside it.
How does a story begin?
A story begins with a moment of change or tension. A moment where the character asks a question.
How does working on a memoir shift from your work on fiction?
Working on memoir requires many if not most of the same skills as writing fiction; I just can’t write anything that I know is false. Digging around memories for stories is really fun work. Whether I’m doing fiction or CNF, I love just seeing what comes up and what those little moments in life have to offer.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I try to be at my desk by 10am; this comes from my old job, where I had to clock in remotely at 10am. I work until I’m done with my tasks for the day, or when I feel like I need stop. I try to take weekends off from writing but I often find myself taking workshops then.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
In print, I love Poetry and Rattle; online, I love Talking About Strawberries All of the Time of course, and Bending Genres, Neologism Poetry Journal, Smokelong, Corvus Review and Brevity, both the blog and the flash-nonfiction publications.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I love Cesar Aira, the Argentine fiction writer (I
will read anything and everything of his), and right now I’m reading The
Most Secret Memory of Men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, which won the Goncourt
Prize. I’ve also developed a serious crush on Fran Lebowitz, based solely on
her description of someone in LA with whom she was speaking on the phone as
“audibly tanned”. I do love a good turn of phrase.
Marie Cloutier (she/her) is an NYC-based writer of womanhood & girlhood and complicated loves and losses. Her work has appeared in Five Minute Lit, Bending Genres, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes and elsewhere. She is working on a memoir about disenfranchised grief. You can find her at www.mariecloutier.com.
Cloutier has work in the fourteenth issue.