My "How to Write Flash Fiction" Book

I thought I'd start a thread in case anyone wants to follow along and/or add your own thoughts and tips to my process of writing a "how-to" book. Hopefully, it will also help keep me on track so I don't wander off again!

I've written piles of flash fiction and had it published. Now I'm working on a guide to writing flash fiction and getting it published. My stacks of notes are all over the place and I've changed direction with it a couple of times and well, I'm just a mess.

So, starting over~ For the first step, I've got a few other somewhat-related writing guides gathered together here and I'm going to type out their tables of contents and print them out. Not to snitch anyone's work, obviously, but simply to get ideas on a logical flow for organizing all of my notes.

Since I think it's a pretty niche thing at this point, I'm just going to go ahead and self-publish it. So, I don't have to write a formal proposal.

Thoughts?

Wow, that was boring. However, I have a title at least. I think.

Ha, yes the book after that can be how to write a book about how to write a book!

Chapter one is done! Again.

Thanks, Sarah and Siri.

Maybe I will send it to an agent or publisher, hmm. All or nearly all of the ones I've checked out seem to be self-published but I guess I won't know if I don't try.

3,000 words. I won't think about how many still to go.

Thanks, Shaun.

I thought I had a lot of it done because I have so many notes. I didn't realize it would be so hard to organize.

Jamesaritchie said:

Am I the only one to see irony in writing an entire book about how to write flash fiction.

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LOL! I'll be sure to make it very short.

Thanks, guys.

Ken said:

how are you laying the book out in general?
"how to write FF" in one part; and "how to market FF" in another?
just curious about the overall organization.
G'luck!

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I guess I am not sure yet, seeing as how I switch it all around every other day.

Thanks wallfull.

Well I guess there isn't much point in staying up half the night to write in peace if my family is going to start staying up just as late and bother me anyway. Maybe I'll have to switch back to the day shift.

I think it is kind of addicting. Ooh, I see you have a new book out, too. Congrats!

I have the book. I've had the book. The problem is organizing the book. Group, re-group, and re-re-group. It looks easy but it's really annoying. But that's okay, writers obviously like to be miserable!

There now. I've hit the 10,000 word mark and printed it out to review what I've done so far. That wasn't so bad, was it?

Yes. Yes, it was.

Writing is hard.

Now that I've got 12,000 words done, I see the final shape of this. 25,000 words might well cover everything I want to say.

So far the only back matter is "For Further Reading," and I may leave it at that. I know I'd use that section myself. But I'm not sure about a glossary or index so I might skip them.

I think I've changed my mind back again about looking for a publisher. The few other books out there on writing flash fiction all appear to be either self-published or put out by micro-presses. Which seems a good clue that there's not a large audience.

Maybe I'll just finish it up, give it a couple of read-throughs with my crit partner, and put it out as both an e-book and in print.

One other thing, I want to include a few sample stories but it strikes me as a bit full of myself to make them all ones I've written. Wondering if I should contact a few writers whose published flash stories I love and offer them a few bucks to let me include their stories.

Also wondering if this all makes good sense or if I'm just being lazy...