I've always been a fan of text-visual crosses like this, though I'd not heard of Beckley. Thanks so much for the inspiring post! I tried a Beckley-style story too: https://substack.com/@josephayoung/note/c-138906024
Hi! I loved this piece! Could I post it to a flash fiction website I just threw together at https://flashfiction.neocities.org/? I can include/exclude crediting you/your Substack per your wishes!
this is great—love the photo you shared (the blurriness, the abstracted quality of the fan? that's mostly cropped out, and the movement at the end of the text towards 'In the fall' and how that begins to place us in time (the season) and place (the city and the surrounding area)
As someone just beginning to write fiction, I adored this! I was really inspired by this piece and threw together a little website to share flash fiction in this form: https://flashfiction.neocities.org/. It currently only has one quick one I threw together and Bill Beckley's pieces, so I would love to put the pieces you shared in this essay on this website with your permission. Anyone reading this can also submit any flash fiction of this style to the website!
omg this is so charming! I ❤️ Neocities websites and the whole revival of personal, idiosyncratic, handmade websites…I feel very honored that you were moved to make a little website for this
and yes, please do feel free to put my pieces on there!
Thanks for this great story! Recently, I also enjoy randomly picking an artist from the MoMA archive and learn about the artist’s life and work. I sometimes also get the same positive “I can do this” inspiration. Very fun. The process also motivated to write in unknown formats like this one https://substack.com/@vinceshao/note/c-138813273 I just did.
digging through the MoMA archives for inspo is a great idea—will have to try that (there's so much there to use for new writing/graphic design/collage/other projects!)
and thank you for sharing your own short piece too—love the middle lines with the paired words, especially trimmed/contained
This was a lovely read. I'm definitely in a rut creatively but keep my hand in by using index cards as bookmarks so I have a ready canvas for quotes. Doesn't sound like much but I've always found it comforting somehow. Without taking away any of the magic of the words - preserving it, even - it reminds me that it's also just a sentence and was written with the same tools I'm using to copy it, so maybe I can write sentences too! Makes sense to me anyway.
Thank you Joel! I love the index card practice, too. I often think about ways to keep up a pseudo-writing practice…like when I'm too tired to write, at least I can read other great writing; I can make note of the best quotes; I can (someday) be inspired by those best quotes, and use them as inspiration or material for my own work.
I also very strongly believe in paying attention to each sentence (the fundamental unit of prose writing), and how each sentence can grow into a whole work…which is maybe something I learned from Lydia Davis.
And I LOVE the Walser (trans. Bernofsky) stories you shared! And how each paragraph is a mini-story/episode that feels complete and also a continuation of what's come before. Thank you!!
Oh wow Celine I love this! And I know exactly what you mean -- when I read them I thought "I want to try this" slash "I think I might be able to do this!" I'm going to try one and share it on substack! I'll let you know when I do - thank you so much for this great inspiration!
Thank you, Caroline! I'm really glad you also felt that way about Beckley's stories. The length helps, I think—they are exciting but not SO brilliantly impossibly exciting that they feel out of reach to imitate
I eagerly (but not impatiently…please don't feel pressured!) await your own stories!
Really enjoyed this one, Celine. The sentence in the second story does read better with a comma. My favorite was the third one, though—there was that throwing the reader off with the date not going well, it not being your fault and then surprise! it wasn’t your date even. The unexpected turn made it feel more enjoyable. And the jasmine detail in the second one was lovely.
I don’t have my Instagram account now, but for a while I was doing somethimg similar where I would take an image from my gallery or from Pinterest and write up a short semi-fictional narrative to go with it. Was fun—I’ll take this as a sign to try my hand at it again!
Esha! thanks for the feedback (I was going back and forth on the comma, but after sleeping on it a bit…definitely feel it's improved)
and I'm glad you liked the 3rd story! I'm always really impressed by writers who are constantly subverting your expectations—every sentence feinting to a new potential story—and it was fun to try and make that happen sentence by sentence
I ❤️ the idea of taking an image and generating a story from it—if you do that project again, please let me know!
This was such an inspiring post, Celine! Flash fiction is so fun to write, and images can spark so much creativity. It's so fun to see the correspondences between word and image, even if they aren't necessarily intended to be related. Here's my attempt! https://substack.com/profile/6445842-ramya-yandava/note/c-138980204
Brilliant exercise. I loved your vignette outside the club and was especially delighted that a Bushwick night inspired it (unrelentingly a source of inspiration for me too). public records is a dream; you should try Basement next time you’re in town!
loved this introduction to beckley and was so inspired by your exercise ❤️my friend accidentally printed a photo of hers on a sheet of paper which i thought was the perfect opportunity to try it for myself :) here’s mine: https://substack.com/@miffyshoes/note/c-139882831?
I've always been a fan of text-visual crosses like this, though I'd not heard of Beckley. Thanks so much for the inspiring post! I tried a Beckley-style story too: https://substack.com/@josephayoung/note/c-138906024
Hi! I loved this piece! Could I post it to a flash fiction website I just threw together at https://flashfiction.neocities.org/? I can include/exclude crediting you/your Substack per your wishes!
sure thing! thanks for asking. my name and substack is fine. good luck with your project. i read and enjoyed yours as well.
this is great—love the photo you shared (the blurriness, the abstracted quality of the fan? that's mostly cropped out, and the movement at the end of the text towards 'In the fall' and how that begins to place us in time (the season) and place (the city and the surrounding area)
As someone just beginning to write fiction, I adored this! I was really inspired by this piece and threw together a little website to share flash fiction in this form: https://flashfiction.neocities.org/. It currently only has one quick one I threw together and Bill Beckley's pieces, so I would love to put the pieces you shared in this essay on this website with your permission. Anyone reading this can also submit any flash fiction of this style to the website!
omg this is so charming! I ❤️ Neocities websites and the whole revival of personal, idiosyncratic, handmade websites…I feel very honored that you were moved to make a little website for this
and yes, please do feel free to put my pieces on there!
This is an incredibly inspirational post. Thank you!
thank you for reading!!
especially great, I think
thank you!! have been very inspired by your aphoristic writing lately…I want to be a little more Weird and Playful in my own writing
gogogo, probably I need to be more Weird and Playful in my actual life
Thanks for this great story! Recently, I also enjoy randomly picking an artist from the MoMA archive and learn about the artist’s life and work. I sometimes also get the same positive “I can do this” inspiration. Very fun. The process also motivated to write in unknown formats like this one https://substack.com/@vinceshao/note/c-138813273 I just did.
digging through the MoMA archives for inspo is a great idea—will have to try that (there's so much there to use for new writing/graphic design/collage/other projects!)
and thank you for sharing your own short piece too—love the middle lines with the paired words, especially trimmed/contained
This was a lovely read. I'm definitely in a rut creatively but keep my hand in by using index cards as bookmarks so I have a ready canvas for quotes. Doesn't sound like much but I've always found it comforting somehow. Without taking away any of the magic of the words - preserving it, even - it reminds me that it's also just a sentence and was written with the same tools I'm using to copy it, so maybe I can write sentences too! Makes sense to me anyway.
Loved your stories above: they don't read as if they were written quickly! Brought to mind the delightful Robert Walser who wrote a lot, briefly, about Berlin. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2012/02/03/berlin-and-artist/
Thank you Joel! I love the index card practice, too. I often think about ways to keep up a pseudo-writing practice…like when I'm too tired to write, at least I can read other great writing; I can make note of the best quotes; I can (someday) be inspired by those best quotes, and use them as inspiration or material for my own work.
I also very strongly believe in paying attention to each sentence (the fundamental unit of prose writing), and how each sentence can grow into a whole work…which is maybe something I learned from Lydia Davis.
And I LOVE the Walser (trans. Bernofsky) stories you shared! And how each paragraph is a mini-story/episode that feels complete and also a continuation of what's come before. Thank you!!
Oh wow Celine I love this! And I know exactly what you mean -- when I read them I thought "I want to try this" slash "I think I might be able to do this!" I'm going to try one and share it on substack! I'll let you know when I do - thank you so much for this great inspiration!
Thank you, Caroline! I'm really glad you also felt that way about Beckley's stories. The length helps, I think—they are exciting but not SO brilliantly impossibly exciting that they feel out of reach to imitate
I eagerly (but not impatiently…please don't feel pressured!) await your own stories!
Really enjoyed this one, Celine. The sentence in the second story does read better with a comma. My favorite was the third one, though—there was that throwing the reader off with the date not going well, it not being your fault and then surprise! it wasn’t your date even. The unexpected turn made it feel more enjoyable. And the jasmine detail in the second one was lovely.
I don’t have my Instagram account now, but for a while I was doing somethimg similar where I would take an image from my gallery or from Pinterest and write up a short semi-fictional narrative to go with it. Was fun—I’ll take this as a sign to try my hand at it again!
Esha! thanks for the feedback (I was going back and forth on the comma, but after sleeping on it a bit…definitely feel it's improved)
and I'm glad you liked the 3rd story! I'm always really impressed by writers who are constantly subverting your expectations—every sentence feinting to a new potential story—and it was fun to try and make that happen sentence by sentence
I ❤️ the idea of taking an image and generating a story from it—if you do that project again, please let me know!
This was such an inspiring post, Celine! Flash fiction is so fun to write, and images can spark so much creativity. It's so fun to see the correspondences between word and image, even if they aren't necessarily intended to be related. Here's my attempt! https://substack.com/profile/6445842-ramya-yandava/note/c-138980204
I am so HAPPY that I came across this. Thank you so much for sharing! I feel inspired
Brilliant exercise. I loved your vignette outside the club and was especially delighted that a Bushwick night inspired it (unrelentingly a source of inspiration for me too). public records is a dream; you should try Basement next time you’re in town!
loved this introduction to beckley and was so inspired by your exercise ❤️my friend accidentally printed a photo of hers on a sheet of paper which i thought was the perfect opportunity to try it for myself :) here’s mine: https://substack.com/@miffyshoes/note/c-139882831?