I finally had a chance to sit down and enjoy Brevity: A Flashfiction Handbook by David Galef.

This was particularly fun because:

I’ve published six stories by Mr. Galef in Nanoism, my unusual journal that exclusively features Twitter fiction, the longest running of its kind. Keeping it in the family, I’ve actually published even more (10!) by his son, Daniel Galef.

Nanoism is featured in the chapter discussing microfiction. Galef defines nanofiction in the book basically exactly as I did when I started publishing in 2009: Twitter fiction, stories of 140 characters or less (i.e. teeny teeny teeny tiny stories). As the book includes examples of flash fiction’s many forms and styles, two pieces from Nanoism’s library of almost 800 stories also made it into the book (on page 123).

Aspiring writers of very short stories would do well to check out Brevity in addition to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction which came out back in 2009. Good stuff.