NEW CATHOLIC FLASH FICTION SITE
CWG member Father James Tucker’s new blog, Catholic Flash Fiction: A Division of Catholic Creativity, provides Catholic writers a chance to “try their hand at Catholic fiction.” Father Jim pictures Catholic Flash Fiction as a virtual “sandlot” where an author with a story or character idea can be explored in writing and shared on the site. It also offers an opportunity for writers to exercise their writing skills in “flash” — tight and concise — format. For now, the submissions are only open to Catholic Writers’ Guild members as Father James takes on an experimental role as editor.
As the Catholic Flash Fiction site states, there are many opinions on defining flash fiction. For Father Jim’s purposes “flash fiction is a story told in as few words as possible”, between 300 to 1000 words.
Stemming from a interest in literature and writing since his student days and a wish to flex his fiction writing muscles once again, Father Jim created Catholic Flash Fiction. His original website, The Catholic Creativity Community: Capturing All Things For Christ, creates a network for Catholic lovers of fiction. It includes Father Jim’s book reviews, blog, U-Stream Feed prayers, and his two podcasts, Late Night with the Lord and Catholic Creativity.
“In fact,” states Father Jim about Catholic Flash Fiction, “this whole endeavor fits nicely into the theme of my website, www.catholiccreativity.net. In it, I attempt to focus on both God’s creativity – in God’s creation of all things, and our participation in God’s creative act. I do this by focusing on what we find in the popular culture – although this requires deep contemplation – as well as the creative efforts of God’s faithful people to spread the Gospel through stories, drama, and music.
“The central image I use is the Israelites. Released from bondage in Egypt, they took Egyptian gold and melted it down for their own worship of God. Just as the Israelites were able to do this, we also are called to seek God in all things, ‘melt down’ as it were some of the ideas of the culture around us and see Christ shine through them. However, just as the Israelites got into trouble when they used that gold for fashioning a calf idol, we must also beware not to fashion other idols to worship.”
Father Jim’s also has a website for kids, Comments from the Koala. “This is a video blog just for kids, featuring a whole community of puppets, many of whom are handmade, teaching kids about how God works in their lives, and giving them a safe place to go on the Web that is wholesome and fun.”
Although Father Jim is currently still revising the submission standards, as for now the Flash Fiction entries are as follows:
5. Font: Times New Roman, Point Size: 12, Single Spaced with spaces between paragraphs.
Submissions are open to CWG members and will appear on the CatholicFlashFiction.wordpress.com site. Send you submission to flashfiction [at] catholiccreativity.net.
NEED WRITING HELP? GET IT AT OPEN COM BOX SATURDAY
Every Second Saturday, the CWG Blog offers Open Com Box, an opportunity to leave writing questions in the comment box on our blog. We ask fellow writers to help out by answering questions and leaving suggestions.
Starting Friday Evening at 5:00 p.m. EST, put your writing help questions in the combox of the Writing Help post. (It will appear then.) Stick around to offer answers and encouragement to your fellow writers. This is a chance to ask for very specific advice in order to help you move to the next step in your writing life.
Everyone starts out writing as a rank beginner, and everyone always has room for more growth, so any and all questions are welcome. Want someone to quick look at your website and give you ideas? Want help fixing an uncooperative paragraph? Trying to figure out which publishers are looking for 80,000 words of Celtic Sci-Fi Detective Comedy? And what is the difference between ‘lay’ and ‘lie’ anyway?
It’s like a mini-conference, one Saturday a month. You can start asking questions with the Blog prompt at 5:00 on the 2nd Friday.
Remember you can follow up with more Q&A at the
SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE CHAT
Every Sunday from 9-11 p.m. EST. Open to the public at www.catholicwritersguild.com.
Kudos Father Jim—will be in touch and "Open Com Box"–very cool