A Writer's Notebook, One-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-And-Thirty

Today was the second time that I just jumped in to writing a flash piece without a very strong sense of what I was planning to do, and it seemed to work.  Last night, I just began with a bit of dialogue that came to mind, tonight it was just a situation, or maybe it was actual the first line describing the situation.  In any event, I feel like I am getting over the first major hurdle in developing this new daily flash fiction practice, which is reaching the point of being certain I can write something each day.  I knew, at least in some sense, that I could, if only because I went through a similar kind of period when I started writing daily in general.  I actually only started writing daily, at first, because I was working on a novel and so I knew what I would be writing about when I started.  It kept me from feeling as if I didn't have any idea what I was going to put down when I started.  Even if I was a bit stuck on a specific scene or something, I had a general sense of what needed to happen and could always get at least a line or two.  Now, though, I am getting familiar with taking any starting point and making a story of some type from it.  I am not going to pretend that this is the largest thing I need to learn in terms of crafting great fiction, flash or otherwise, but I know it is the first real challenge and that once I am truly confident about my ability to just write a new story when I want or need to, even if I haven't thought of anything in advance, I will be far more relaxed and confident in my approach, and as a result I expect I will learn a great deal more.  

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