Too many ideas run through my head. Different genres, age levels, etc… And as an already slow writer these clusters of ideas can be quite hazardous. They start to bleed into whatever current work is happening, only to be deleted once the mistake is realized. However all these ideas can be used to your advantage…with the help of more writing.

Flash Fiction is described as fictional work of extreme brevity. By most accounts they should be no more than 2000 words. Most are much shorter. There’s Six-word Stories which is fairly self-explanatory. Then there are selections known as Twitterature that are 140 character pieces. There are Dribbles topping out at 50 words and Drabbles going to 100 words. The last subsection (to my knowledge anyhow) is Sudden Fiction which is a story told in 750 words.

Using any variation of these can help relieve some of the pressure of story ideas. You can allow yourself to wander a bit before coming back to the main path. While you take your little detour it’s possible to have it enhance your story. Let’s say you’re writing a particularly dark work yet a lighthearted tale has been pressing on you. That light can be added to the dark to grant it some humanity. Or maybe what you come up with can create a character desperately needed to develop your story. If nothing else you may just want to revisit your flash fiction at another time, and boom you got yourself another story to work on.

Use these short stories to jump start ideas or be a fidget spinner for your brain. Nothing has to come from them in the end other than allowing you a bit of a reprieve. Well that’s how I take a bit for myself anyway. Until next time have a writeous day!

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Matt Williams is an avid reader, a collector of many pens, an ever improving father of two, and an all-around fanboy. When he’s not wrestling with cats or a long commute you can find him hunkered down writing something imaginative. He’s working on publishing his first book Beyond Here, a middle grade story involving a coma and a singing flower with a bent stem sometime in 2016, along with a few projects with his other daughter.