How did you first come
to writing flash fiction? What is it about the form that resonates?
To be frank, it is something I can finish and be happy with in the limited time life throws me. I do write longer pieces but, like many writers, I have a hard drive full of partially finished stories. That digital closet of lost souls can get overwhelming and sometimes you just need to let one of those suckers out. Flash fiction tends to wind itself fairly tightly around a specific moment or concept so I can write a story about the little things that pop into my mind while I’m riding my bike or eating lunch or whatever. If I suddenly find myself with a few hours – rather than a day or a week- it is enough time to roll an entire flash through my brain and really taste every word. I can finish a draft and be satisfied it got the attention it deserved.
How does a short story begin?
It begins with a bizarre static image that becomes the first thread of a wildly patterned rug. For example, “Norma’s Fire” began when I was driving around near Sudbury and I stopped at an intersection across from these two old birds driving a 1980’s Toyota. They were gloves-off shouting at each other and behind them, drifting upward, was a plume of smoke. As I carried on down Highway 17, I started to think about those two. What was their relationship? What were they flighting about? Was it all somehow connected to the smoke? I don’t know what happened to those old ladies in the Toyota, but here’s hoping their house was still standing when they got back home.
You’ve published work in multiple genres. Do you see your writing as a single, extened project, or a series of disconnected threads? How do you keep the genres straight?
I think if a story is good, it can be told in any genre. The question becomes which genre would serve it best? I recently wrote a ten-thousand-word story and realized at the end of that dizzying process that it was actually a stage play. All of the interior monologues that I thought were so nuanced and clever just weren’t necessary to the story. In the end, it was all about the action and dialogue. Also, as a stage play, the story was no longer a drama. It was a comedy. Writing in many genres allows me to give stories the home for which they are most suited rather than throwing a fit and tossing them in the trash (which still happens, though perhaps less often than if I was only writing in one genre).
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
The sad truth is, I cannot earn my living through writing, so my craft has to exist in the margins of chaos. It can be difficult to find those long, uninterrupted stretches required to enter the state of dissociative zen my brain needs spit out anything halfway interesting. I can edit in stolen hours, but I find it very difficult to write a first draft on the fly. There are people who can just sit down in the midst of a cacophony and slap down page after page of brilliant prose. I would beseech such folks to please return to their home planets and give the rest of us simple humans a chance.
I am lucky enough to have access to a remote cabin in Cape Breton. Twice a year I go there for about a week and try to drain my brain. On the way in I stop at the store, pick up a block of cheese, two loaves of bread, and a bag of apples. Then I go inside that cabin and literally do not come out for a week. By the time I emerge, I have become profoundly unhealthy both mentally and physically but I usually have enough raw material to chew on for another few months of sporadic editing in the city.
My profile picture is a selfie I took last fall when I was on my way home from the cabin. Please notice the savage, unbrushed hair and the unhealthy sheen of one who has consumed ten consecutive grilled-cheese meals.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I am a big fan of NUNUM and their focus on the visual and the unusual. I am a filmmaker so I very much appreciate their overt focus on the visual aspects of a story.
I also like Into the Void and appreciate their willingness to print stories that are a little strange. The market for truly weird stories can be somewhat narrow and I am often stuck with “hard to place pet” stories in my aforementioned hard drive. Journals like Talking About Strawberries, NUNUM, and Into the Void give me hope for the future.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I like writers who can lay down their weird plainly, as if they are reading out the evening news. I quite enjoy Anita Goveas, Marisa Crane, and Jack Breakfast for that reason.
Kate Felix (She/Her) is a writer
and filmmaker based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, Litro, and
the Cream City Review, among others.
She won the Wilda Hearne Prize for Flash Fiction, the Connor Prize for Poetry,
and has been shortlisted for several other writing prizes. Her short films have
been selected for over forty independent film festivals in twenty different
countries. Her small daughter describes her as being “like a rainbow but with
one stripe made of darkness”. Find her online at www.katefelix.com or
@kitty_flash on twitter.
Her flash fiction appeared in the second issue.
To be frank, it is something I can finish and be happy with in the limited time life throws me. I do write longer pieces but, like many writers, I have a hard drive full of partially finished stories. That digital closet of lost souls can get overwhelming and sometimes you just need to let one of those suckers out. Flash fiction tends to wind itself fairly tightly around a specific moment or concept so I can write a story about the little things that pop into my mind while I’m riding my bike or eating lunch or whatever. If I suddenly find myself with a few hours – rather than a day or a week- it is enough time to roll an entire flash through my brain and really taste every word. I can finish a draft and be satisfied it got the attention it deserved.
How does a short story begin?
It begins with a bizarre static image that becomes the first thread of a wildly patterned rug. For example, “Norma’s Fire” began when I was driving around near Sudbury and I stopped at an intersection across from these two old birds driving a 1980’s Toyota. They were gloves-off shouting at each other and behind them, drifting upward, was a plume of smoke. As I carried on down Highway 17, I started to think about those two. What was their relationship? What were they flighting about? Was it all somehow connected to the smoke? I don’t know what happened to those old ladies in the Toyota, but here’s hoping their house was still standing when they got back home.
You’ve published work in multiple genres. Do you see your writing as a single, extened project, or a series of disconnected threads? How do you keep the genres straight?
I think if a story is good, it can be told in any genre. The question becomes which genre would serve it best? I recently wrote a ten-thousand-word story and realized at the end of that dizzying process that it was actually a stage play. All of the interior monologues that I thought were so nuanced and clever just weren’t necessary to the story. In the end, it was all about the action and dialogue. Also, as a stage play, the story was no longer a drama. It was a comedy. Writing in many genres allows me to give stories the home for which they are most suited rather than throwing a fit and tossing them in the trash (which still happens, though perhaps less often than if I was only writing in one genre).
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
The sad truth is, I cannot earn my living through writing, so my craft has to exist in the margins of chaos. It can be difficult to find those long, uninterrupted stretches required to enter the state of dissociative zen my brain needs spit out anything halfway interesting. I can edit in stolen hours, but I find it very difficult to write a first draft on the fly. There are people who can just sit down in the midst of a cacophony and slap down page after page of brilliant prose. I would beseech such folks to please return to their home planets and give the rest of us simple humans a chance.
I am lucky enough to have access to a remote cabin in Cape Breton. Twice a year I go there for about a week and try to drain my brain. On the way in I stop at the store, pick up a block of cheese, two loaves of bread, and a bag of apples. Then I go inside that cabin and literally do not come out for a week. By the time I emerge, I have become profoundly unhealthy both mentally and physically but I usually have enough raw material to chew on for another few months of sporadic editing in the city.
My profile picture is a selfie I took last fall when I was on my way home from the cabin. Please notice the savage, unbrushed hair and the unhealthy sheen of one who has consumed ten consecutive grilled-cheese meals.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I am a big fan of NUNUM and their focus on the visual and the unusual. I am a filmmaker so I very much appreciate their overt focus on the visual aspects of a story.
I also like Into the Void and appreciate their willingness to print stories that are a little strange. The market for truly weird stories can be somewhat narrow and I am often stuck with “hard to place pet” stories in my aforementioned hard drive. Journals like Talking About Strawberries, NUNUM, and Into the Void give me hope for the future.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I like writers who can lay down their weird plainly, as if they are reading out the evening news. I quite enjoy Anita Goveas, Marisa Crane, and Jack Breakfast for that reason.
Her flash fiction appeared in the second issue.