400! (I Can’t Believe It Either!)
by Jeff Baker
Four-Hundred Stories! I almost can’t believe it!
But I’d better explain.
Back in May of 2016 I stumbled across a mention of a Facebook page called “Monday Flash Fics.” The idea was simple; they would post a picture prompt Monday and anybody who wanted to had a week to write up a flash fiction (usually less than 500 or 1000 words) story to go with the picture; post it on their blog and link it to the Facebook page.
“Sounds interesting,” I told my (late) husband Darryl. I set about and wrote the first one nine years ago this month ( https://authorjeffbaker.com/2016/05/25/monday-flash-fiction-on-wednesday/ “Entr’acte” posted May 25th,2016) and posted it, probably a few days early. “That was fun,” I thought. “But I probably couldn’t come up with one every week.” Nonetheless, I tried and wrote a very mediocre story as my second attempt. I had to do better than that, so I wrote a third one next week. And I kept at it.
The stories kept coming, I was really enjoying doing them even though I was never crazy about deadlines. In the middle of it all, the moderators started a second flash fiction site; “Friday Flash Fics,” and for a little while I was writing two flash stories a week when I could! Eventually only the Friday page was active. And, for the record, the participant’s interpretation of “flash fiction” was a little loose; my longest was probably about 1500 words! Nobody complained!
And somewhere during this past year I hit at least 400 flash fiction stories written and posted! I took my first break from doing the weekly stories for a few weeks last June when I went to California, but I still hit 400 stories last year! I’m amazed! (I know how lazy I can be!)
My stories were hit-or-miss at the beginning, blending good stories with sucky ones but the good ones started to outnumber the bad. One of the first ones I thought was really good was called “A Hierarchy Of Widows.” The regular practice was improving me as a writer and the discipline of the Monday deadline was working wonders for my near-total lack of discipline. Regular writing will do that for anybody and I highly recommend it! There was also the motivation that writing a story almost every week was really cool to mention in an author bio! I had only written a handful of longer stories with LGBT characters and I started using a lot of those (Okay, mainly Gay and Bi) as well as experimenting with form; imitating other authors and doing stuff like drabbles.
I also started experimenting with series characters, like the sci-fi tall tales told at Demeter’s Bar (I had actually published earlier Demeter’s Bar stories elsewhere) and the supernatural adventures of Gay teenage runaway Bryce Going and a host of others.
As well as my stories set in my quasi-Arabian Nights styled World Of Three Moons which span several millennia, and which I plan to make into a fix-up novel some day. In fact I am hoping to make more than one book out of some of the various characters that have appeared in the flash fictions.
Several of my stories and characters which first appeared on the site and my blog have appeared in stories elsewhere, or at least I have longer stories submitted or written or plotted out. Writing the weekly story has been a boon to my productivity in other areas too.
As for that “weekly story” idea; in actuality there are about 49 or 48 stories for the year, at least that many official picture prompts, as the site takes time off for Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s. But the last few years I have inevitably written at least one story for those holidays, posted it on my blog and linked it to the site. And since early 2018 I have been doing a monthly flash fiction story for the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge the excellent writer ‘Nathan Burgoine started up. So this adds up to about sixty stories posted per year (!!!!)
And for the last few years, to my amazement, I have become moderator of both the Friday Flash Fics page and the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge as well! (It’s fun, but I gotta be out of my mind!)
I’ll close it with this. I wrote the original version of these lines for a post of a story celebrating an anniversary of the weekly stories a number of years ago. They fit pretty well here:
I have exercised my writing muscles and maybe become a better writer as well as developing better and more regular work habits when it comes to writing. (Skills that would have served me well had I developed them and started regularly writing in College about 40 years ago!) I’ve written the weekly story when I was eager and motivated and when the words flowed as well as when I didn’t feel like writing. I owe a lot of thanks to ‘Nathan Burgoine, Brigham Vaughn, Kelly Jensen, Elizabeth Lister, Cait Gordon, Jeffrey Ricker, (the Late) Helena Stone, and others too numerous to mention for their encouragement in maintaining these prompt sites. Again, many thanks!
And I will add here, in 2025, I thank all of you for reading my words.
—–jeff baker, January 22, 2025
Here’s a link to the Friday Flash Fics Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/1924438861210817 and the version on MeWe https://mewe.com/fridayflashfict/feed and the version on Blue Sky https://bsky.app/profile/fridayflashfics.bsky.social Want to try a story yourself? Everybody’s welcome!
Jeff Baker’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various markets, like “Schlock Webzine” and “Amazing Stories.” He blogs about reading and writing sci fi, fantasy and horror and other sundry matters around the thirteenth of each month and he really likes using italics.
He regularly posts fiction on his blog https://authorjeffbaker.com/ and wastes time on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jeff.baker.524042 and Blue Sky https://bsky.app/profile/jeffbakerauthor.bsky.social and Mastodon (as “Mike Mayak.”) https://mastodon.otherworldsink.com/@MikeMayak