Short on writing time during the holidays? Try micro fiction

'Tis the season when time is at a premium, and parties and shopping and eating and baking and family time and everything else gets compressed into weeks that are already jammed full. How can you find time to write? Maybe the best solution right now is to fit the length of your writing to the amount of your available time.

With only 10 minutes to spare here and there, you could try some micro fiction (a.k.a. sudden fiction; short-shorts; flash fiction, etc.). In fact, you could concentrate on the writing some pretty short stories—maybe 50-100 words. To see some examples, take a look at www.nameyourtale.com, a Web site that concentrates on these tiny tales.

Writing a very short story is still a great writing challenge. With so few words to work with, every single one has to count. WriterMag.com columnist Brandi Reissenweber addressed these short forms of fiction in one of her Writing Q&A columns and noted, "Flash fiction doesn't give you the permission to skate by with an anecdote or a vignette. You still need to adhere to the demands of story: crafting character and conflict, increasing the intensity of tension, and building a story arc."

Go ahead, take a stab. What have you got to lose but 10 minutes?

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