#amwriting #flash

This contest with The Forge was I think the second place I submitted it. I really love how they ran the contest. 2 weeks for submissions. 2 weeks for reading and judging. Everything was announced within about a month, I believe. $5 entry fee (!) — barely more than the average regular submission fee

As a copywriter, keeping things short and concise comes somewhat naturally now. I always knew the piece hinged on its last line, and I just needed to work out what came before it.

I wrote it as a poem at first. In sharing it with a couple of poets, I realized how ill equipped I was to write a poem after 15+ years away from the genre. Decided to try flash instead. I’d never written flash, but had read it and had a sense for how it worked.

I initially jotted it down on my phone about a year ago, just trying to get out the disconnect I was feeling, what Naomi Klein calls “lives built on not seeing and not knowing”

"There is … no such thing as an 'activist,' a term that suggests political action is a special role rather than universal democratic responsibility. Instead, there are those who act in line with their cultivated political ideas, and there are those who don’t."

🫶🫶🫶 thank you so much for reading! And Shapland’s book is so enjoyable—can’t wait to hear how it goes :)

Thank you @katiehrob.bsky.social for the fabulous editorial work on this one 💫