Why do you write flash? What makes it different for you?

I think it fits in with the amount of time I have to write—which is not that much these days since I have a lot going on, including a full-time job, family, my buddies, co-editing 100 Word Story, swimming, reading, and just living. But it’s more than convenience. Writing flash also harkens back to my writing origins as a poet, where I worked within different structures, with imagery and themes, and with an attention to language. What I am still learning now that I write fiction is dialogue, something that is new to me as a writer and pretty difficult.

What’s your writerly lifejacket: character or plot?

May I say both? If I don’t have a plot, I am lost. I am just writing to write. But I need a narrator and others I can believe in to tell the story. More and more I am holding off on writing until I have a better sense in my head of what I am writing and who is going to do the work for me in my story. I have been making notes, too, and sometimes asking myself how I could make my idea more interesting or unusual.

Writing style: Quick and messy or slow and precise?

I am slow and precise. I write some, back up, rewrite and add a bit more, back up, rewrite, add a bit more, until the story is done. Then I might go in and add sections or re-work it. It can be a laborious process, with pen and paper. I think I have probably not entirely transitioned from writing poetry to fiction.

What element or part of your “real life” do you think most influences your writing?

I seem to write a lot about moving, being lost, homes, and travel. I suspect this is because I moved a lot as a kid. These days I have written more from the news since I find it very troubling, and about aging and mortality. Pretty much whatever is going on in my life and around me may make it into a story, from the pedestrian to the significant.

If you could recommend a few flash stories or writers, who/what would it be?

There are so many talented writers out there right now that it is pretty impossible to pick. One of my favorite journals to read is Jellyfish Review. I think Christopher James has pretty impeccable taste, and I like how he will publish brand-new writers or established one, and across genres. I would be hard pressed to call out specific writers, but I will say that I have never read a Meg Pokrass or a Molly Giles story I didn’t like.

What story of yours do you wish got more recognition?

 One of the first ones I wrote when I discovered flash fiction, “Travels through Time and Space with Zora,” which was published in Eclectica in 2014. I really put a lot of myself into that one, and I still like it when I read it over again these days.

BIO: Lynn Mundell’s writing has appeared this year in SmokeLong Quarterly, Monkeybicyle, Thread, Booth, Gone Lawn, apt, Bird’s Thumb, Fanzine, and elsewhere. Her story “The Old Days,” originally published in Five Points, is included in the W.W. Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction. Lynn’s work has been recognized on the Wigleaf “Top 50 Very Short Fictions” long lists of 2017 and 2018. She is co-editor of 100 Word Story and its anthology Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost19). Learn more about her at http://lynnmundell.com/