rolhirst.co.uk

The majority of these stories were written for the flash fiction website Elephant Words.

The premise of the site is simple: every Sunday, one writer posts a picture, and every day for the next six days, they and five other writers use it as springboard inspiration for a story. At best you’ve got six days to write your story and publish it on the site - at worst, 24 hours.

Working to a deadline is a very powerful device that forces you to try and tell your story in as concise a fashion as possible. Working alongside five other hugely talented writers is an equally powerful device that forces you to always do the best work possible.

All these stories are presented as they were originally written and published - with no further edits. I’m sure if I went back and started picking at them now I’d find flaws and start wanting to fiddle… but I don’t want to. I prefer to let them live or die with the reader as originally written. Most of them come out pretty well, considering…

One final note - before I began my involvement with the EW gang, I’d just about given up on the short story as a workable format for my writing. Now, I can’t live without it…