The Flash Fiction piece that won me an invite to a Festival.

Here in Otago New Zealand, the New Zealand Young Writer’s festival is underway, celebrating all youth that are writing their souls out and wish to express themselves. A series of workshops, panels, and discussions will unfold, and as a budding writer myself, how could I not get involved? 

The marketing and exposure across their social media has done a fantastic job at garnering interest and a local audience ready to get stuck in. Including, to my intrigue, a flash fiction contest. 

Having mulled over something as long-form as my novel, I felt it a nice change of pace to do flash fiction of around 300 words. 

Their prompt was: It Was Tense 

Sounds fun enough, right? Perhaps the scene could have a great deal of tension? Characters could be caught in a tense situation. But, after some recent creative endeavours of my own, I decided to flip the script and interpret the theme in a different way.

Frantically typing down a crisp first draft, I sent in my entry to the co-ordinators of the festival. And much to my surprise… I was announced into the Top 5 winners!

So, to celebrate this success, here is the piece I submitted, warts and all. Enjoy! 

Creatively speaking, I was all over the place. Don’t ask me why, but I had spent most of my lazy Saturday morning trying to pull a Tolkien and create my own language. I mulled over such threatening subjects as Phonology, Syntax and Valency. Three pages in my sketchbook were filled with symbols so foreign they only made sense to me, as I mulled over how I’d write my language. Don’t get me started on tenses.

Still running on the last few swigs of coffee that filled my veins, I then went from prose to poetry and read a few of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Of course, by the time I arrived at haiku’s and seemed fit to write my own, the wellspring of inspiration and caffeine had dried up quicker than my washing out in the sun.

I sat determined to write a haiku that summarised all I had learnt that day, from language to poetry. My mind works like that. Put it down simply, else it flies off with paper wings into the lost library of my brain.

Time flew as well, until the slamming of the flat’s front door like clockwork. Still snuggled up on my red couch, I watched Tracey race across the lounge, her bag flying to land next to me. With a huff and a puff, she flicked the kettle on. ‘Rough day?’ I dare ask.

‘Oh my god. Yesterday? Massive flock of customers. Right? They come in right before closing. So, we’re there another two hours closing. And tomorrow it’ll be just two of us staff on again!! And today, right? Today… had a bloody Karen mouth off at me over her order which I knew I’d gotten right!’

Then, like a lightbulb upon my noggin, I had my haiku.

“Friend laments today

The past, and soon the future

Turns out it was tense”

Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!

- Daniel

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