The Flash Dash

The Flash Dash is about Writing a sentence and suddenly thinking of a thought that should be said and adding that thought within two dashes.It's purpose is not to detract from the original sentence. _________? Well you know that gaggle of birds flying overhead that can turn into a gardeners worse nightmare when you're writing about how to garden. Or that distracting music that needs addressed when you're writing about tranquility. Or something to the above mentioned ideas.

In thinking, the flash dash is not seen but thought. You're explaining to your friend why you're late and you give only the barest of excuses, within those two mental dash are the real reason you were detained and you keep those to yourself. You're not lying, you're just not disclosing private thoughts that belong only to you.

It's about that busybody you'd love to tell off, but are far too polite to do so, but just you wait, there's a way of turning your annoyance into a bit of humor when you've learned how to write succinctly and with a minimum of words.

The Flash Dash is about concentrating your thoughts into as few words as possible and having no extras around to turn the fiction into anything but an a-ha moment that can be read in less than five minutes.

The Flash Dash is about absurdities made to look real with props other than words. Its turning puzzles and over rated words into completed episodes of wonder and enchantment.

The Flash Dash is fun and is the words are always capitalized to give them a creditable air. You know, an obvious strut such as comparing the dash with its eleganct look to the Tophat worn by The New Yorker Magazine. Years ago when I was extremely poor and wanted to hone my writing skills and to one day being able to write correctly, and with verve and style, I subscribed to The New Yorker and I fell in love with their dash. I liked their writing and I wasn't put off by their long sentences and by and large their humor. Although it was meant for a far richer audience I scrimped up enough money to pay for the subscription. I read everything thoroughly, even the ads.

The truth of this Hub is what? Writers are notoriuos liars when they want to be. All it takes is for them to get a few facts as a foundation and whamo! they've begin weaving these in and out as if they're nesting birds building a nest. But, just as soon as they've invested in this pleasure and freed their souls from too much of the world's bitter truths, they're once again ready to tell it like it is.

I love to read the Bible and sometimes I get snagged by a few lines that holds me hostage and I decide to hang onto them and float around in outer space until I can decide what to make of these persistent words. (Don't worry, that line isn't a lie, it's an exaggeration. I was not floating around in outer space, I was seated in my comfortable armchair. I opened the nearby bible and read this proverb: It's better to live in a corner of the roof than to dwell in a roomy house with a quarrelsome woman."

Ordinarily I would've gone on to other paragraphs but on this particular ocassion I wanted to fully understand the wording. I thought about it for a while from several different angles and nothing came up that inspired me to write about it. I am a woman, not a quarrelsome one, maybe in younger days I was more so, but I prefer to leave those thoughts in the past. I live alone, and were I had need to, I have no one to quarrel to.

I jotted the proverb done on paper, looked at it in its solitary form outside the bible and finally laid it aside. I went to bed. This morning I was writing on Helium and somewhere I happened to come across some excellent articles about flash fiction. I had previously reviewed some of these and a few left me astounded. I want to learn how to do that, I vowed. A little while later, still in the flash fiction mode, I selected from the contest a title and wrote my version of what I thought flash fiction was. I will let it set for a few days before I upload it. That was part of the instructions I had read.

I had so much fun with picking an idea or topic and jotting it down and then writing like crazy for a sentence or two until ideas began rushing forward and then in less than a hour I had a five or six hundred flash fiction story. Then thought why not try it with the roof setting quarrelsome woman:

Live and let live (Flash Fiction)

“It’s better to live in the corner of a roof top than in a roomy house with a quarrelsome woman” are words that keep ringing through my ears, Hilda told the psychologist.

‘I’ve read that in the Bible, too, but that’s not to be taken literally. Hilda, that says nothing about your motives. You sat on the rooftop near a corner for two days. Your husband has been dead for six months. Were you punishing yourself for some slight you feel you owe him”?

“I owe him nothing. I sat up there because the wind blew my ladder down and I had no close neighbors in hearing distance to call to”.

“That’s incredible.”

“Yes I know, that’s what the helicopter pilot told me when he lifted me off.”

“He had to report the incident to the police and they thought they’d better check you out with us. No hard feelings, Okay”?

“There’s one thing, though. Could you ask someone to please clear up that roof leak for me? I’m getting a little old to continue stopping up roof leaks.”

“Anything you want, seventy year old roofer. How about a new house with no stairs to climb?”

“No thanks, a new roof will do fine. The city need not go in debt over a mistake in judgment. Use it for those who need their head, and not their inanimate roof fixed.”

_________________Until I learn more. . . .

____________On this platform the Flash Dash will begin. When I learn how.

Lesson one. Choose a Hub teacher. I added the following links to this Hub so my first lesson will start in reading them. Another truth: I was introduced to flash fiction by Helium.com, will learn from them and from HubPages how to proceed. That's fair and equitable. I not only tell the truth about my lies, I am also an equal opportunity content writer.