SPEAKERS:

Lina Lau, Rachel Thompson

Rachel Thompson:

Welcome luminous writers to the **Write, Publish and Shine** podcast. I am your host, author and literary magazine editor Rachel Thompson. This podcast explores how to write and share your brilliant writing with the world. In each episode, we delve into specifics on how to polish and prepare your writing for publication and the journey from emerging writer to publish author.

Hello luminous writers and welcome back to a new year of the **Write, Publish and Shine** podcast. This episode is the first genre episode this year as part of my plan to sprinkle these deep dives into specific Creative Writing forums throughout the podcast all year. And many of us set a goal to write more at the turn of each calendar year in the Gregorian calendar, I’m raising my hand along with the rest of you who are and one form that can be rather accessible to those getting back into writing. And especially those who have trouble finding the time to write as you’ll hear in our conversation is flash memoir. So that means personal stories that are fewer than a 1000 words. Often they’re a lot shorter, as short as just a few words, or some are written in a 300 word length or 100 word length this will talk specifically about in this conversation.

This conversation is with Lina Lau who describes herself as a writer, mother and owner of too many notebooks and has published short memoir in X-R-A-Y, Prairie Fire, Hippocampus (where she is now a reader as well), Carte Blanche and Little Fiction/Big Truths. Lina and I talk about how flash memoir writing captures a moment and Lina reads a 100 word story and brings us into the experience of writing it. And also we chat about the characteristics required of memoirists, all is done in an authentic and open way as Lina is one of those gifted writers who is very frank and unpretentious about her writing and experiences in creative nonfiction flash and creating that genre.

Now for my conversation with Lina Lau. I want to welcome you to the podcast, Lina Lau and thank you so much for being here to talk about flash memoir today.

Lina Lau

Thanks for having me, Rachel. I’m very excited to be here.

Rachel Thompson

So I wanted to start by definitions. Because there are a few different definitions of flash writing or it feels like it’s kind of changed to be less rigid, I guess, since its inception, which started really in fiction. So it’s was like flash fiction. And now, more recently, there’s something called Flash memoir or micro memoir, what would you say is flash memoir by your own definition?

Lina Lau

Yeah, it’s a good question. Because I don’t even know if there’s a standard definition to go by I struggle with that Sometimes, I think, you know, at a basic level, length is one of the defining characteristics, Flash being a 1000 words or less. And there’s cut offs for different publications, and then memoir just being, you know, based on nonfiction, based on details of your own life, in my experience, writing and reading it, it’s flash for being short, but also like a flash in terms of a moment in time, like it’s a short amount of space that you have. So you’re not writing somebody’s life story in such a small space, you’re writing maybe a meaningful moment. And I think maybe you’re trying to define it that could be one of the characteristics of it.

Rachel Thompson

When you said that about the focus on Flash as thinking it’s like there’s also this flash of insight somehow in it, too. There’s something that I’m pointing in about that moment.

Lina Lau

Exactly. And I think that that’s just in my brief experience with it, I think it tends to come sort of in the last line, you know, maybe there’s a quick turn, or a deeper insight into the moment from the narrator , right, that flash of insight that that’s what makes it a story in such a short amount of space.

Rachel Thompson

I think it’s exciting to define things and work within limits, but also to be like, make your own definitions of things to

Lina Lau

Whatever works. I think also there’s more levy for additional flexibility with it. Some of the pieces that I’ve written for Flash, longer flash, I guess closer to a 1000 words, I find you could have less I don’t know how to say and be less cohesive after the story. You can use just more scenes, more fragments, and it still pulls together as a story I think maybe more easily than when you have more space if you’re writing a longer piece, even sentence fragments. I think there’s sometimes can be an overlap with poetry too with Flash, although I’m not a poet at all. So I haven’t delved into that part of things. Yeah, but I have read pieces that read very poetically, but are more considered, like micro memoir flash versus poetry.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah. Like there’s a lyricism to the writing every word counts in the same way that it does in poetry.

Lina Lau

Yeah. It’s funny. I went to a local writing group here in Toronto a couple months ago and was the only one there that wrote flash. And I made that comment. And I think I insulted someone. Because I said in Flash, and I said, the comment about how every word count, and he’s like one in my longer work, the words don’t count. Now, like, okay, that’s not what I meant. But it counts in a different way.

Rachel Thompson

Maybe it’s like the words have to do more. They have to have such precision and do more to bring the story.

Lina Lau

Exactly. I think so. Although that is really funny that you put someone just, he took it as an insult to his work. And I didn’t intended as such anyways,

Rachel Thompson

Do you remember first coming across the genre? Because it does feel like you took to it like a duck to water? And when did that happen? Like right away? Or was that a gradual thing?

Lina Lau

I was thinking about that. And I think I just emerged into it. I don’t think I meant to, when I think back to a few years ago, when I started to write more seriously and start to try to get my work published. I don’t think I knew what Flash was, I think my first couple of pieces just happened to be flash, like they just happen to be shorter, and fit some of those criteria that we talked about at the beginning. So that’s what I mean by think I emerged into it. I think after I had some pieces published, then I don’t remember where I first heard the term. But then I became more intentional about it, about trying to create pieces that were shorter, more meaningful moments, that kind of thing.

Rachel Thompson

I love hearing that, that you kind of fell into the genre, because I was going to ask about your choice, your decision to write your first flash piece. But I guess once you had more familiarity with the genre, you know, what did that do for your writing, when you kind of focused in on this as a specific genre?

Lina Lau

It made writing easier for me. So I think for me personally, and I think that maybe your comment about a duck being drawn to water was is accurate. I think it’s just the way that I think I think it just taps into a deeper focus that I can sometimes have. I don’t want to say don’t find it hard. But I think I do find it easier. I think for me thinking about writing longer works at this point feels hard. I think I’ve evolved into more thinking about writing or my pieces in these shorter moments. And so that has helped, I think, and I hope to become better at it. But I guess it limits me in other ways. Because I’m limiting myself to these shorter forums. And I’m, you know, developing that skill set, but not so much developing other writing skill sets at this point. But that can be for later, leno in my writing journey. Yeah,

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, we both have younger kids, too. And it strikes me that that’s one of the reasons why writing shorter pieces works For those of us in this stage of life, maybe two, it’s like, because attention is so rare, and the ability to just sort of hyper focusing on a moment, right, that moment, and then move on is really important.

Lina Lau

Yeah that I mean, that’s definitely part of it. I’ve written so many things, just in piecemeal scraps of paper, here and there. And then I cobble them together into something.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, so I guess I’m saying that because I’m thinking, well, you know, yeah, later, Lina will have older kids, and maybe a little bit more attention.

Lina Lau

Time, time to spend on it all. Yeah

Rachel Thompson

But not to undermine the success you’ve had now, too, because I think you’ve done really well in this genre. And that’s really laudable. You’ve published many micro memoir in many journals. And I know in our writerly love community, when I think of flash writers, among our members, you’re one of the first that comes to mind. And so I invited you to talk to me about this. And you’ve talked a bit about what keeps your writing in the genre. And that you do think of yourself primarily as a flash memorist, I’m wondering, what has the publishing experience been like in regards to edits and suggestions for micro memoir, and just any notable experiences where you worked with an editor,

Lina Lau

I still feel like I’m new to the whole writing slash publishing world. So I, you know, I have a handful of publications, thank you for the compliments earlier. So some of my experience have been pretty clinical, we’ve received your piece, we’ve accepted it. This is one of the, we published, thank you very much. And that’s that’s the end of it. I don’t know if my experience has been any different. Just because it’s been flash. My most recent publication in December was with record review. And it was about a piece that I’d written about my mom, like losing her slowly over her lung illness. And that was a very warm experience, I think, in part because of the subject matter. But I received a acceptance on the day of my mom’s funeral. And when I wrote back to the editor, I shared that with them was just an emotional sort of moment for me, the correspondence and the care and the tenderness with the edits. There was a bit of more back and forth with that piece for edits suggestions, and I’d had with any other piece and in part it was because I know that there was a reality of the piece being published. There was a part in the piece that I wanted to omit take back because I didn’t think it did service to my mom’s memory and to honor her. And so I put that forward. And they work really kindly with me to happily take that part out and rework that section to flow better. So that was a really lovely experience working with the editors there. And that one stands out just for like it just being more meaningful.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s the thing about this being memorised, this is real life, and it’s happening now. That’s you’re writing it as well to like, and so to have an editor be able to meet that it’s just really beautiful to be that moment with you.

Lina Lau

The whole experience is really what’s natural. And she worked with me also, it was a piece called last Christmas. And it sort of highlighted some of the different Christmases I’ve had with my mom over the years. And the editor also worked with me to help get the piece published right before Christmas, the most recent Christmas that we just had the timing of it and advocating for the piece to be published at a certain time was, again, just like really very meaningful, above and beyond just like the regular editing process, I think, but it was really nice

Rachel Thompson

I asked if you would bring a piece to share with us to read. Would you like to read it now?

Lina Lau

I wrote a piece for a publication called Five minute lit, they take pieces of 100 words, exactly 100 words, with a character count for the title as well. So it’s pretty constrained. So I’m gonna read that piece. It’s called watering plants.

Every morning my daughter spritzes them with her purple spray bottle decorated with mermaid stickers. She chose green beans, strawberries, pink morning glories. My husband helped her poor the seeds push the soil. “Good morning friends!” she whispers and I pretend not to hear as I tickle her younger sister to keep her occupied and out of the way. “Mom!” she exclaims. “Look!” her eyes widen. “If two ants got married, there’s a green arch poking out of the dirt just for them!” A perfect description of the beans, bro. We both looking at this new life emerging.

Rachel Thompson

It does everything that we talked about flash memoir doing. It’s like this beautiful crystallized moment, I feel the lyricism there, and the imagery of the beansprout to becoming something else something much bigger.

Lina Lau

It highlights something for me about flash that I was speaking about with a friend of mine recently that the container matters for flash. And for micro memoir. There’s these different, you know, a 1000 words, sometimes. Sometimes it’s 750 words, sometimes its 500 words, 400 words I’ve seen, it was 100 words that seemed 50 words. And I think that the size of the container also matters in the way that for me this piece as an example. I couldn’t have written that in 500 words, it was its small enough moment that gets the 100 words. And all those word counts, I guess still counts as flashers micro memoir, but I think the type of story that you’re going to tell sometimes shifts based on that, if that makes any sense.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, for sure. It’s like there distillations of moments. But the moment even has to fit the limitation,

Lina Lau

I think so that’s something again, newer thought that I’ve had about flash recently. But because as I’ve been experimenting, not experiment, but just writing pieces of different lengths, it struck me that some pieces weren’t the shorter amount of space and others, even if it’s considered flash might need to be opened up enough to be 1000 words, and be a little bit longer.

Rachel Thompson

Can you talk a bit about how you drafted this piece, too? Did you write a 100 words? Or did you write more than a 100 words and then pair it down or what happened?

Lina Lau

For this particular one, it was a pretty fair match in the way that I wrote a 100 words. And then this was the publication that accepted a 100 words. I have written other pieces, though, I know one of my first earlier published pieces I had written it was a piece I was working on, it was a longer piece. And then for a course that I was taking, I had to hand something in there was a 1000 words. So maybe links into when I was talking about falling into it. I may think this was part of the process of falling into it. The piece was maybe 2000 words or 2500 words. And so I just cut it I slashed it like I had just chopped coal sections out and condensed it into something that was a 1000 words. And so that was a different experience of intentionally choosing the details to try and craft the story. So I had this like larger many words on paper, but then having that that was an experience of picking and choosing what to put in to craft something that was convinced in shorter.

Rachel Thompson

I’m picturing like a marble whittling or like carving?

Lina Lau

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, that’s exactly what that was. Yeah. What do I want to highlight here? How do I piece this together in different ways, and then it made it a better story. It made it a way better story. It was long listed for the prize. And then it was published shortly after, when the previous version, the locker previous version was not having luck anyway. So maybe that does speak to also what I was saying about how sometimes the content, you know, has to fit the container.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, and sometimes you don’t know until you try making the container a bit smaller. That’s an experiment. I’m thinking of that guy who was thinking that all of his words matter differently. A lot of these words I could cut out than they,

Lina Lau

In my case you that’s it. A lot of other words didn’t matter what mattered was when I whittled it down to

Rachel Thompson

What are your biggest challenges when it comes to writing apart from the given of finding the time for it, which I think we can just agree that’s, that is a challenge.

Lina Lau

Yeah. I think just with kids, it’s just a given that your time is not your own. I think you know, my other challenges are reading as a reader, and not as a writer like so reading my own work more objectively, when I’m working through drafts of it. And I know that there’s the thought of, you know, putting your piece away for a long time, and they’re coming back to it. And that can help. But sometimes it doesn’t help me at all, even if it’s away for months, and months and months, and I still come back to it. So I guess just seeing it with fresh eyes is something that I personally sometimes struggle with.

Rachel Thompson

How do you work around that then?

Lina Lau

If you have any suggestions for me, then I can implement them

Rachel Thompson

I just think your community of course. So it’s like,

Lina Lau

Yeah, well, that’s it.

Rachel Thompson

I think other people that you trust,

Lina Lau

Yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say is just then sharing it at that point, and having other people help me be my eyes to see what’s working and what’s not. Because I can get sort of stuck in the way that I see the piece and not being able to see beyond. So that’s one of the other challenges besides time. I think sometimes I can be a little bit constrained with my writing. And maybe this does speak to the fact that I write flash, but sometimes I think it can be rigid with it. And so it’s sort of all intertwined here. But I think I need to be okay with getting things wrong, or being Messier, a little bit with the story, instead of being so prescribed, even though precisely, this is something that needs to be there. For flash, it’s a little bit of a conflict.

Rachel Thompson

That’s almost like it’s the best. And the worst thing about the forum, right? Which I find is often true, like the opposite, like the greatness of it can also be the hardest part about

Lina Lau

The worst of it. Yes, exactly the same thing, two sides of the same coin, I guess,

Rachel Thompson

One of the things I find memoir requires is so much self-knowledge. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot more lately, even just sort of in a way of like, coaching people around early drafts and going, I wonder what was happening here, I’m trying to draw that out of people a bit too, which is not to say maybe that they don’t have that self-knowledge, but it’s just hard for them to express in their writing. But I myself somehow feel embarrassed about my past self-writing with less awareness of who I am and what was happening in those moments and thinking about, Oh, my gosh, it’s obvious now with that objectivity, that years in bring you. I’m wondering what you think about that idea of like self-knowledge and the need for it and writing memoir. And then also, if you have any practices to build your self-awareness, or if you have other aspects that you want to practice around, building up that understanding that’s needed to have like, a take on moments of your life and be able to write about them?

Lina Lau

Yeah, it’s such an interesting question that I’m not sure I’m going to have great insight into. I know what you’re saying about reading other people’s work, and then trying to sort of point to some questions or like neutral questions around well, what about this thought, or what was going on here? Exactly. And, and also how hard it is to do that for your own writing, too. I mean, I think, as writers or as memoir risks, you may be more naturally inclined to be self-aware or self-reflective. I think being open to that is important, first of all, but I don’t have any tried and true like that practices. I’m a big fan of therapy for people. But these are sort of like more lifelong thing. To better understand other people, to better understand yourself, to better understand or acknowledge or be self-compassionate around some of our own faults and negative traits, I guess, that we all have. And I think just for me, like as my background for work, and my educational background is in psychology, I was initially drawn to that, because of my interest in why people do what they do, and better understanding that so that drive is still there. For me, a lot of my own reading, on my little spare time are going to be nonfiction books around, I don’t know, not self-help books, but sort of better understanding the human condition. And that’s just something I’m already interested in and drawn to it. But again, those are more just things that they’re not prescribed exercises of here’s a way to build this skill. But it is I think, it is a challenge. So I am a reader for hippocampus magazine for their flash nonfiction section. And I’ve been doing that for about a year. It’s a wonderful experience to be part of that team. But I would say that that’s one of the things that I noticed continually in reading as a first reader is this element of what does this story mean? Where’s the narrator’s awareness? Where’s the narrator’s reflection in this piece? So I do think that it’s a common part of maybe not flash but maybe just memoir writing that is one of the bigger challenges is sort of putting yourself in there also and figuring out what that story actually is, and what the narrator’s role is in that. And that relates to the self-awareness piece, I think.

Rachel Thompson

I mean, I love that you’re seeing that in the work too, because for one thing, it’s something I’ve been seeing. So it’s like, oh, great, I can talk to somebody about this. And of course, something I see in my own work. And yeah, this is a very good plug for therapy, which I think has also been something that’s helped me reframe things. Of course, it’s like reframing your past a lot of the time, and then you’re able to dig deeper into the writing, but always super accessible to everyone to those who don’t want to just be like, everyone needs to get therapy. But also, I think, even riding toward that idea of like, the curiosity like reading books, because also like you, I love reading books about the human condition and understanding why people think in certain ways,

Lina Lau

The curiosity, I think, just the willingness to be open, and the willingness to be wrong, I think is important about anything yourself. Other people like, I think that that’s a key component to it as well.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, I think the parts that I maybe want to talk about being embarrassed to or are more about moments where I’m litigating is what I call it is like I’m litigating the past, and I’m like, see how I suffered, see how these people got things wrong and made this and not going, Oh, what’s my accountability in this moment? And maybe why are people acting in that way as well

Lina Lau

Yeah, well, that’s a hard, it’s a hard thing to do. To be able to see it in a different way, right, to be able to see beyond well see what everyone else did. And then to settle into it for yourself and sort of accept it and be okay with it, and then get that on the page. That’s the crux of it all.

Rachel Thompson

And then in terms of best and worst, maybe it’s also like, why I do it, too. It’s like, I want to have that layer of understanding and writing is maybe the best way to get that perspective, too.

Lina Lau

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think so. And then when you’re reading other people’s work, too, it’s a way of sharing with other people that okay, it’s not just other people go through some of these things, too. Right. That connectedness with other people.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, like it’s knowing that yeah, that we’re not just going with all these insights too. Then often the work we read is not that this writer does not get into our network to get it. It’s just like they are still exploring what this story is about. And this is like this earlier draft about a piece that really can be something but it needs that extra review. That objectivity that maybe you get from other readers helping you (unclear) you towards I wonder why this person did that. I wonder what this narrator was thinking about.

Lina Lau

That is exactly what I think is gonna be about one of the differences between you know what makes it a story you’re talking about. You are writing a piece verses it is just gonna happen to you answers some of those questions I think can happen that can bring a piece to the next level.

Rachel Thompson

And maybe putting it into a bigger context, even if it’s like a domestic story, which is funny, that’s sort of an old fashioned term for women’s writing all these domestic stories. But I’m just thinking, you know, it doesn’t have to be like this. It’s just like this war that happened or something. But it’s, but it is kind of like thinking, what’s the bigger significance here in the life of the writer or, or the world?

Lina Lau

Yeah, I agree. So it does help that to have other people to read your work and to help you hone in on that. Yeah, I think so to that. It’s what’s the bigger significance? And that’s the you know, what’s the universe? What’s the word universe?

Rachel Thompson

Universality?

Lina Lau

Universality. Thank you.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah, exactly. The bigger significance is what the reader is going to take away. Sorry, I feel like I jumped on the soapbox a little bit more, but I’m glad that you went there with me. So I’m curious about, you know, I guess thinking about this, or even just thinking about the other craft things that you’ve picked up along the way? Is there anything that you wish you could tell your past writer yourself now about writing? Anything you’ve learned on the way?

Lina Lau

No, I’ve learned tons and I keep learning, I think just to keep going that consistency, part of it is just with the young kids, and then not having time, and, and all of that, but I think just to keep being as consistent as you can with it. And just to keep learning. I like thinking about how much I’ve learned over the past few years. And you know, it can be just writing in general, but even specific to flash about just that genre, even though it’s sort of narrow, but just what I’ve, there’s still so much there with it. So I think that’s one message I tell my younger self is just to keep keep going and sort of what I had mentioned earlier, its okay to not get it right away. It’s okay to be clunky with it. At first, is it a never ending process as big if you don’t know if there’s ever an end point.

Rachel Thompson

Yeah. And I’m wondering also, if there’s something about the container too, it’s like every story kind of needs to find its container. And it’s okay. Like you said, to get it wrong, too. And then go Oh, what if I cut or just a happy accident, I cut 2000 words from this and now it’s winning multiple awards.

Lina Lau

It didn’t want a bunch of awards. It was long listed for one award. I think that the message of the container is an important one. I wrote a piece for a course that I had taken. And then it was a stiff ticks. It was sort of a flash, but it was sort of these two panels side by side as my first time trying it. But there was a, I can’t remember, but I just like there’s a publication or a contest that had a lower word count, so then I condensed it. And then there was like another contest or another publication that I wanted to try. So I extended it. So my point is that I’ve really diluted this piece like I don’t know anymore where it’s at, because I’ve got these different versions and these different size containers, and I need to go back and just focus on what’s the story that I want to tell and like, not worry about the word count. But that was a lesson learned to try not to fit it, you know, just where I think the container does sort of matter. But maybe not focus on container, just focus on the story, and let it be and then figure it out from there.

Rachel Thompson

I feel like we’re doing like this is true. And then the opposite is also true.

Lina Lau

That’s, you know

Rachel Thompson

But I feel like there’s something true about that, too. It’s sort of like, okay, these rules work until they don’t, and then it’s the opposite of the rule. So keep experimenting, stay curious. And following the scent of the story is I always quote Petzi, Warland. And saying, do you have any notable inspirations for reading flash from other writers like to go to books or authors or journals?

Lina Lau

I don’t really know how to answer that question. I don’t really to be honest. I mean, there’s certain publications that I turned to that are more well known for being a strong slash publications like brevity or smoke long. So I don’t have any specific writers that I go to. I like scrolling Twitter and seeing what writing people post and then reading it. And there’s so much good work that is not always visible, because not everyone reads all these little mistakes. But I think that you can really just tap into any of them and get some good pieces and learn some stuff.

Rachel Thompson

What are some things you would share with writers interested in Flash memoir?

Lina Lau

if someone was looking for where to start, say, start with a small meaningful moment, and spiral it from there, in terms of where to start for writing a piece

Rachel Thompson

That kind of feels like, also, I might sound like a cool permission slip to people listening who think, Okay, I’ve got this meaningful moment. And now I have to wrap 40,000 words around it to build a full novel, but it’s like, actually, that moment could be the whole story. And that’s the exciting possibility of flash.

Lina Lau

And that’s why I do come down to these moments. Because sometimes with flash, you don’t have the space, the backstories don’t matter, you know, and it’s just coming down to something that’s small and impactful.

Rachel Thompson

And we all have so many of those, I think, too.

Lina Lau

Well, yeah, that’s, you know, it’s just noticing them or drawing meaning from them. Our whole day is made up of those small, impactful moments. I think,

Rachel Thompson

That makes me curious about how do you capture those in the moment so that you’re like, Okay, I gotta catch this for a flash story later?

Lina Lau

That’s a good question.

Rachel Thompson

Or do you?

Lina Lau

I do, and I don’t, I guess it depends on the story. Sometimes I just jot stuff down, or I kind of make mental notes of things that have happened that I’m like, I think that this could maybe turn into something, I just give an example I have, you know, a lot of these sort of, they call them kid artifacts around so I, the other day, my went to pick up my daughter and she, her socks got wet from her boots. And at school, I guess you stuffed them into my pocket. When I got home, I didn’t know but I pulled out these wet socks from my pocket. So I just kind of have these things that I like pull out for my kids. But my other daughter had these buttons that she taped together and like these different shapes, she laid them out flat and taped them together. And so I’ve instead of just throwing it out, I don’t want to make away so I’ve gone to like taking the tape off of them to reuse the buttons. But now there’s this like sticky residue on the buttons. So now I have this pile of sticky buttons. So little things like this. These are some things that I just I’m like making mental notes of that. I’m like, I feel like I could do something with this like but these like these sort of these things together to make a piece. I don’t know what it is yet.

Rachel Thompson

But it’s I mean, thinking of the PC read to with that image of that little beansprout. It’s like you’re gathering images is what it feels like.

Lina Lau

Yeah, but could be one way of doing it, I guess. Yeah. Or one way that I do.

Rachel Thompson

I’m reverse engineering your writing.

Rachel Thompson

So I would love to end with our quick lit complete the sentence section. It’s kind of a misnomer, because some people go really long, although being a flash writer, maybe we’ll go short, but it’s up to you

Lina Lau

No, we’ll go short. I think I glanced at them. And then I thought I’m just gonna say what comes to mind.

Rachel Thompson

Okay, great. So no preparation?

Lina Lau

No preparation, no Association.

Rachel Thompson

The first is being a writer is

Lina Lau

a long journey.

Rachel Thompson

Literary Magazines are

Lina Lau

underrated, I think that more people should read them.

Rachel Thompson

Editing requires

Lina Lau

patience.

Rachel Thompson

Rejection for a writer means

Lina Lau

nothing personal. I think it’s good to keep in mind that it may just mean that your work is not ready or it may mean absolutely nothing about you or your work at all. And it’s other sorts of that play with, you know, other pieces in the magazine and how things fit and things like that they have nothing to do with you at all.

Rachel Thompson

And then finally writing community is

Lina Lau

so invaluable. That’s a lesson I keep learning over and over as I keep going on my own writing journey is the importance of writing community, just for Support and networking and being around your people, I think that also get the same kind of work that you do

Rachel Thompson

Our degree, of course, as you may hear in the writing community, thank you so much Lina for sharing your wisdom about flash and for sharing your work with us today too. And I’m just really grateful for you now for this and then also just for being a wonderful part of our writing community as well.

Lina Lau

Thanks so much Rachel, for everything that you do for creating the community.

Rachel Thompson

So that was Lina Lau I think by now you understand what I meant when I said Lina is unpretentious and brilliant. And I love her honest share about needing more objectivity to write and ding ding that in writing community.

Lina is a way back member of my writerly love community and I’ve loved watching her consistent work that she puts into her writing and the support she gives other writers also really took note of what she said about the willingness to be wrong and how that’s a quality required for writers of memoir both long and short. And that’s hard. The struggle is real, but it’s worth the struggle to get to a deeper truth in your words.

The Write, Publish and Shine podcast is brought to you by me, Rachel Thompson. Sound Editing by Adam Linder. Transcripts by Diya Jaffery. Production consultation and support from Meli Walker who is also our course community facilitator.

You can learn more about my work to help writers write publish and shine at Rachel thompson.co. When you’re there, sign up for my writerly love letters they’re sent every week and filled with support for your writing practice.

If this episode encourage you to explore micro or flash memoir, I would love to hear all about it. You can always email me at Hello@RachelThompson.co

Thank you for listening I encourage you to gather those moments like socks in your pocket and write about them each day.

My guest spoke to me from Toronto – lands of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Wendat people’s.

And I am a Settler-Canadian, born in Treaty One Territory and raised in Treaty Two Territory. I’m living on the lands of the el-Muzzina Bedouin in South Sinai, Egypt, beside the Red Sea, in relative proximity to the war in Gaza, where there needs to be a ceasefire to end civilian suffering.

Transcript Outline

00:01	Introduction to this episode.
01:20	Lina’s introduction
02:34	Definition of Flash Memoir
05:44	How Lina came across this genre
08:13	Lina’s publications
13:15	Lina’s method of drafting a memoir.
15:07	Challenges of writing
20:09
23:20 23:39  26:10  26:53 27:50 29:18 30:28  30:51	Benefits of reading others work
The bigger significance in writing
Some learnings about writing
Inspirations
Nuggets for writers interested in flash memoir
Lina’s way of writing flash story
complete the sentence section
Adios to Lina
Ending words