keyword "labyrinth" title "sharon's labyrinth" in misc. flash fiction

This grand experiment in writing flash-fiction from a new prompt every single week the library is open, it’s a lot like navigating the Minoan labyrinth, isn’t it? We have the goal, getting to the heart of the word just like getting to the heart of the maze and we know how far we’re going to have to walk, five-hundred words or less but hopefully not much less, but still we have no idea how many dead-end turns we’ll have to face along the way. Nonetheless we have the anchor of the thread to guide us and a word we know we’re headed toward.

There is a monster in the middle, though, at the end of our adventure for me it is even worse than the minotaur, than the horrifying demi-god, I know that when I get there I will have to do battle with an even subtler yet vastly more terrifying creature, when I get to the terminus after all my wanderings, I’ll have to slay my fear, the mighty Wordcount.

How often do I wade into this cage of false start and half-baked notion, get there to the promised land and then find I’ve conjured seven hundred words instead of the prerequisite five-hundred and, while I have reached the finished line, have to begin again? Letting you in my own secret, sometimes I write the first draft in a fevered hour or two and the rest of my toil here is twenty or thirty hours over the rest of the week trying to figure out how to shave down the homunculus I’ve conjured until it fits into the rule-set.

For others, though, I know that the monster in the middle is not called Wordcount, the horror is rather called Title, especially for the handful of my comrades who feel as though it is important that they get the prompt word in that title. For others still, the Godzilla breathing hot fire down their necks is Twist, as older definitions of the form suggest some Twilight Zone-ish broken-glasses-twist at the end. Some even have the specter of Reverse Wordcount, having their idea peter out around three-eighty then having to vamp for more details, though I can’t imagine that problem myself, being painfully wordy on paper as in person.

Myself, while I am a typist emboldened and inspired by having to hold to a few rules, anything more than two or three rules and my mind recoils so my journey sticks to using the prompt and trying to get as reasonably close as can to five-hundred words. Two rules then sky’s the limit, that’s a confabulation to suit me just fine.

Still, we mostly get there because next Wednesday, we’re there to encourage each other. That’s the secret, that’s how we all make it, a community to help us not get lost in the labyrinth Sharon has built for us this week. Hell, I even got the prompt in the title this time. Five-hundred on the dot as well. Bonus points.