Tag: Flash Piece

  • Short Story Review: “This is a Dog” by Joanna Theiss

    (The story “This is a Dog” by Joanna Theiss appeared in Milk Candy Review.)

    It is hard to pack an emotional pay off in under 1,000 words. Not impossible, just hard.

    Joanna Theiss does this rather masterfully in her flash piece “This is a Dog,” which is one of the best examples of a story paired down to the essential, the marrow of it, and at the same time, leaving enough gaps for the reader to fill in, thus allowing the story to come alive, and have an impact.

    The story is about a dog, if you couldn’t figure it out. And it’s about loving another, and the hope that you did right by them, maybe never knowing for sure.

    Theiss does use a story trick of starting each sentence with “This is…” I’ve seen this type of trick before, from armature writing groups to the pages of The New Yorker. Yet, I will say that Theiss does it correctly. The “This is…” creates a rhythm to the story, helping it charge ahead, and as the piece progresses, the “This is…” begins to take on different meanings from the narrator. Also, Theiss structures her story very well, dividing the piece in five sections, each with a specific narrative function, that not only builds to the climax, but lands perfectly at the conclusion. And that conclusion also nicely ties up the “This is…” motif, making the whole story feel that we have completed a journey with the narrator, who has been changed forever by the events.

  • The Ol’ Sick Kid Bit

    I had plans today, but the kid got sick. Well, she got sick at school and I had to go and pick her up. I mean, she woke up early and wasn’t feeling the best, but she said it was only a headache and she could deal with it. Then, when she got to school, she started feeling worse, and her teacher called me to say that I should come and pick her up.

    Which I did. And she didn’t look good when I got her. Real pale, and whimpering a little, too. Just a sad sack. When we got home, she took a nap right away. She never takes naps, so the fact that she took one leads me to believe that she actually wasn’t feeling good.

    As for my plans… they’re shot to hell. I got the laundry done, and I will get a blog out today. Yet, I doubt I will make it to my journal, and there was this rewrite of a flash piece that I wanted to complete.

    But… We just watched an old David Tennant Doctor Who episode. That was kind’a cool.

    But… I’m still not getting my work done.

    At some point I have to start asking myself if I’m being a good dad, or am I rationalizing my procrastination? You know, using the kid as an excuse.

    I feel like I should be doing more, creating more, and then I also have this feeling come over me that none of this really matters. It is a fool’s errand that I am on; somehow thinking that any of this amounts to something.

    If it gives me purpose? If it means something to me? Does that have value?

    You know, following my bliss only seems to lead me introspective questions.