What would you love to see in the submissions?
Great question! I would love to see interesting and innovative uses of the flash form while also delivering narrative. What do I mean by this? I love all the different ways a flash can be written, especially hermit crab flash, but I’m not just looking for novelty. I would love to see innovative ways of writing flash that serves the story it is telling, and also a story with nuanced layers to it. 1000 words is quite a lot, so remember it’s a limit, not a target. I’m a great fan of microfiction (under 400 words).
What is your superpower?
My superpower is giving feedback. As a writer, I think you learn so much yourself from analyzing someone else’s work, and looking at the choices that will help draw out all the layers of the story the writer is telling. I’ve been in a weekly workshop for a number of years, and I have learned the difference between feedback and editing. With feedback, I try not to give suggestions, but to ask open-ended questions which aren’t intended to get the writer to write my vision of their work, but to open up the possibilities of what’s on the page. It’s hard to do this with your own work, which is why critique partners, workshop groups, and beta readers are such an important part of the writing process.
What is your writing process?
There’s a lot of crying… I’m joking, but finding the right way to say what I want, and how to structure it, can take a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, and yes, occasionally, some tears. There’s also a lot of coffee involved! There’s a lot of overlap between finding what I want to say, and how I want to say it. There’s a lot of rewriting, especially with longer projects. On rare occasions, the stars align, and the thing I want to say arrives fully formed, with very little rewriting. That’s always a gift.
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Fiona McKay is the author of the Novella-in-Flash The Top Road, AdHoc Fiction (2023), and the Flash Fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). She was a SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow in 2023. Her Flash Fiction is in Bath Flash, Lost Balloon, Gone Lawn, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, Ghost Parachute, trampset, Variant Lit and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland with her husband and daughter. She is autistic + ADHD.
X: @fionaemckayryan
BS: @fionamckay.bsky.social
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