February 7, 2014

Flash! Friday: Prompt #2-9

Flash! Friday fiction, written in a flash - so don't be too hard on me!  This week's required element is "envy," in a 150-word (+/- 10) story based on this photo:


A Writer’s Lament

It’s hard, they say. The training, the restrictions, the keenly scrutinized diet and the woeful lack of social life. The years of absolute focus and determination, all underscored by an unsatisfiable, ruthless ambition that drives them through the pain. 

But all the sweat and tears, those injuries and sacrifices, they could lead here: the Olympics.  Only the best of the best, if you discount all the loopholes limiting entries from the same country, could compete for the ultimate athletic honor, claiming their time in the public eye.

The pinnacle of mastery, with an unquestionable marker of success – that’s what awaits them: a resounding cry, declaring virtuosity or denouncing nerve-pressured failure.  Definitive, quantifiable, and unassailable.  

Theirs isn’t a world of gray-scale insecurity, languishing in indeterminate obscurity, at the mercy of public subjectivity.  

If only our world was as black and white.

(140 words)

3 comments

  1. Very nice. I am impressed with anyone who can write, period. Flash fiction sounds like fun, but throw in a prompt and I think that makes it even harder. Keep up the good work and have a great weekend.

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    1. The prompts make it easier to do this regularly, for me. It's an exercise, to write something based on given elements. That way, I don't need inspiration to come out of nowhere for flash – just for my books, haha.

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