Month: August 2013

Flash Fiction Challenge: Vote Here!

The time of choosing is at hand. Who will be the next Flash Fiction Star? Kudos to the entrants. Check out this week’s entries here. Vote for your fave then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Remember, all our winners will be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology. So, support your fellow writers and participate in this week’s voting, then spread the word, bang the drums, and share the link to let everyone know the vote is on.

Polls close tomorrow at 5 PM.

 

Who penned your favorite flash fiction entry this week?

  • Sherry Molteni (50%, 32 Votes)
  • Laurie Boris (44%, 28 Votes)
  • Jon Jefferson (8%, 5 Votes)

Total Voters: 64

Loading ... Loading ...

NOTE: Entrants whose submissions exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Earlier this month Stephen Hise gave his take on a survey of readers coordinated by bestselling author Marie Force. On the subject of reviews, Hise summarized a few of the survey’s findings with these words:

Reviews are important, but readers pay far more attention to other reader reviews on retail sites than to reviews from publications and review sites.

This seemed like a fair summary of the six survey questions related to reviews and their impact although I did have one nit to pick, which we’ll get to shortly. In the comments I saw this exchange between Hise and IU contributor Lin Robinson. Continue reading “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”

Sobriety vs. the Blank Page

Guest post
by Cherie Vause

You’ve all seen movies with the opening shot of a dark apartment on skid row. With only the light from a neon sign from the bar across the street, the camera closes in through a dirty window, onto a man who is lying across his rumpled bed, smoking a cigarette, and sipping on a glass of whiskey. He’s unshaven, and hung-over from an alcoholic binge. The camera pans to a typewriter on a desk with a sheet of paper rolled up half-way. The blank, stark white paper is an angry retort to the man’s desperation. Next to the typewriter is a bottle of cheap whiskey, an ash tray, overflowing with dirty butts, and a stack of clean, white paper. He’s broke, hungry, and his gal has left him angry and bitter, but he still keeps her picture on his dresser. He rises, crosses over to the picture and looks longingly at the girl. He turns, and defiantly stubs out his cigarette. He drains his glass of whiskey and pours another. He holds the glass while staring at the crumpled papers all over the floor; then he finishes the last of his whiskey in one furious gulp. This guy is definitely a candidate for a bullet to the head. Continue reading “Sobriety vs. the Blank Page”

Switching Brains

My day job is kicking my butt. Or rather, it is kicking the right side of my brain. After hours filled with schedules and multi-tasking and spreadsheets — oh, the spreadsheets — my creativity is bruised and submerged. I make time to write but the stories won’t come. I walk to free my mind and end up solving budget problems. I start to write, anything just to be writing, but the words are all surface babble, self-conscious, and not creative at all. I go to bed in hopes the characters will break free in my dreams, but I fall asleep with visions of spreadsheets lying flat.

The left brain is a big bully, and I’d like to shut it off and bring back my right brain from exile, but the truth is, both sides are always talking to each other. Research from Australia (Pettigrew, 2004) shows that the human brain naturally switches dominance from left to right and back (or logical to sensory, detailed to holistic) about eight or ten times every minute. For mathematicians, this switch rate can be as low as two times per minute, giving their logical brain near full dominance. On the flip side (get it?), Buddhist monks who have spent years practicing meditation can sustain dominance of the sensory brain for several minutes at a time — something most mere mortals cannot do. Continue reading “Switching Brains”