Sharon wrestles the ghost of Chuang Tzu

(by Daniel R. Jones)

Pulled through a wormhole, the specter of Chuang Tzu glid across the centuries. He rose from the ground like the witch of Endor, spit out in a dermatologist’s waiting room, of all places. He’d been summoned to hold space for Sharon, a woman you’ve met so often, you’d swear Joe Campbell is her daddy.

Sharon, that neon beige of a woman, sat gawking, shocked to find a kindred spirit (if you’ll forgive the pun) in Chuang Tzu. She was an unlikely candidate for his teachings. None of her thinking revolved around esoteric Chinese mysticism. Rather, she spent large swaths of time defending the Middle West with noble buzzwords, such as “cost of living,” “light traffic,” and “protestant work ethic.” Sharon didn’t despise humble beginnings. Nor humble middles and endings, for that matter. She knew there were fates worse than cul-de-sacs.

Sharon was a Moderate: believing all politicians are liars. She believed cliches are cliche for a reason. Same with stereotypes. Rolling stops weren’t stops at all, to Sharon. Rules were not meant to be broken. Sharon would never leave a pump unattended.

Her taste, as well, was milquetoast.

“A foretaste of glory divine,” to Sharon, consisted of Friday nights at Olive Garden and vacations to Saint Petersburg. She didn’t care for the fourth Toy Story. Her favorite songs consistently mirrored the Top 40. She enjoyed Jane Austen, believing her books to be romance novels. Sharon hadn’t heard of the Middle Way, but always sort of reckoned the truth was “somewhere in the middle.”

Oh, Sharon. Always doing things by half. California-sober. Beautiful in Arkansas. Unconcerned, Sharon recognized comparison as the thief of joy. She knew depression is a persistence hunter. That’s why she took tolerance breaks on optimism.

Once, on a long drive through rural Oklahoma, she coined her life motto: You don’t need to catch lightning in a bottle; it’s enough to trap lightning bugs in a Mason jar.

Life was predictable, if boring, for Sharon.

So, she didn’t plan to encounter a Daoist eye-to-eye this morning, least of all on a routine visit about a discolored mole on her left cheek. But while idly flipping through a periodical, she landed on a poem that accidentally summoned the sage, and well, here he was, espousing his views on the perfect man. Or perfect woman, as it were.

How had he cut to the quick? How had he zeroed in on the only thing she ever wanted?

A thought slipped out through the cracks in her brain while her guard was down: Would that I become an empty boat, crossing the river of the world!

Sharon clapped the magazine shut.

She pursed her lips and strode to the receptionist. Best to steel herself against such idle thoughts. Better instead, to think about the weekend, the summer, the holidays. Something to look forward to.

Better, for now, to double-check that the office has her new HSA on file.

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Talking Shop: Minimalism and Flash Fiction

(“Talking Shop” is an ongoing series on the craft of creative writing.)

Minimalism has turned our society upside down.

Apple products have left consumers spellbound by their simplicity. Room decor has become increasingly elegant. Web designers succeed or fail, depending on how effortless their websites are to navigate.

What might be less obvious, however, are the ways in which minimalism has infiltrated our art.

For instance, sparse instrumentation and simple words created the smash hit “Say Something (I’m Giving Up On You)” by A Great Big World.

I believe that a similar frame of mind dominates some of the best flash fiction.

An old writing maxim is “Show, don’t tell.” In other words, rather than describing a character as “a nervous type,” show these traits by what the character does: give him a nervous tic, make him ring his hands, give his speech a stammer, let him pace the room, etc.

The same applies to flash fiction, but sometimes the most revealing aspects of a character or a plot lie in what isn’t revealed.

Consider, for example, the poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” by Randall Jarrell:

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Though it isn’t microfiction, this piece of writing perfectly illustrates how writing can be made more luminous by what is left out. The narrator didn’t give you the gruesome details of the how the ball turret gunner died. Instead he turned your stomach by simply stating: “When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

In the New York Times article “Hearing the Notes That Aren’t Played,” David Mamet writes,

How much can one remove and still have the composition be intelligible? This understanding, or its lack, divides those who can write from those who can really write. Checkhov removed the plot. Pinter, elaborating, removed the history, the narration; Beckett, the characterization. We hear it anyway. Omission is a form of creation.

This idea that “omission is a form of creation” seems to me at the crux of many great pieces of writing. What are some examples you have found of this principle at work? Do you know any great flash fiction that utilizes this technique? Let’s talk in the comments below!

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