REFLECTING FORWARD

There’s another hip on-line lit journal called Matchbook that I admire (read it here). If they accept a flash-fiction piece for publication, they request a critique of sorts, some type of insight into the writing process. As I hold out hope for “Cocoon Man,” I reflect on what I believe is its significance. Here are my thoughts:

My wife’s into scrapbooking. She sticky-tapes family pictures into expensive albums, dresses them up, makes them visually appealing. In “Cocoon Man,” I try to do the opposite. I take a snapshot in time, something from that slim rectangular window of life and try to make it uglier. I dress it down. I examine its anorexic body. I focus on the blemish. I make that blemish fester and grow on skeletal remains.

I don’t think a story can have a lasting impression on its readers unless they’re made to feel uneasy—at least flash fiction anyway, where the plot needs to develop quickly. So why not challenge the reader in the beginning? Why not ask a series of questions that will present the conflict and setting as well as place the reader in an uncomfortable situation.

Forget Hallmark. Forget Norman Rockwell paintings. Let’s have guts, let’s show an exposed foot, and let’s have blatant lies and infidelity and manipulative behavior.

“Cocoon Man” is stripped down to these barebone essentials. The reader, like a moth flying into the flames, is drawn to the light, to its origins, to those initial questions. As for resolution of conflict—what of it? There’s no fancy gift-wrapped packages here to open. There’s no expensive ribbon to untie. And if there were? You wouldn’t be able to see beyond the beauty, beyond the presentation, and that’s not what I’m aiming for.