Flash Fiction

Hey all!  So today I was thinking about Flash Fiction, and all, a lot, a few, or none of you may be wondering what Flash Fiction is, so I'll start out with a short description of it:  "fiction that is extremely brief, typically only a few hundred words or fewer in its entirety."  If you look "Flash Fiction" up in the search box on Google, that is literally what you get.
So why would one write flash fiction when they can write novels, or short stories?
1. Practice.  They are practice for quite a lot of things, actually.  I have a small problem with condensing everything I say, so flash fiction for me is easier than for the normal writer, so how would I use it to practice?  By expanding it into a short story.  What I do is I write the flash fiction, then I stretch the story out into 7.5k, or something akin to that.  For those of you who have problems with making your stories too long, you can use Flash Fiction to practice being concise.  
2. Satisfaction.  I believe satisfaction is very important in the writing world.  I don't like those "How to write faster" or "Write a book in a week" or "How to get paid easy for your writing" or stuff like that because I believe that you've got to work for your daily bread.  There is no easy way out.  "Nothing ever comes to anyone that is worth having, except as a result of hard work." -Booker T. Washington.  However, if you spend 8 years writing one book, you never feel like you're accomplishing anything.  If you write and complete a short story, or flash fiction in a week (whilst still working on your current novel project), then you feel like you got something done, which should give you more energy to continue on with your project.  Anyways, it works for me.
3. You Gain Experience.  Yep, I said it.  Exp.  You know, in video games (let's use Minecraft as an example) you do stuff to gain experience, or "Exp".  In Minecraft when you mine coal, which you need constantly, you get experience, but when you mine iron, which you don't need, and you don't gain exp when you mine it.  You need to practice writing, and as you write short stories, or flash fiction, either one, you get experience in developing character, plot, and setting, and you can practice with more different situations because you don't need as much time to complete one.  

So my suggestion to you, if you want to write some flash fiction, is to get out and research a bit (Before I put up my own post about flash fiction, of course) about it.  They are easy to write, and don't take that much time to write, at all.  Seriously, just 15 minutes of your day to write 250 words, or half an hour to write 500, or whatever your WPM (Word per minute) is, it's not a lot of time.  Even a Hemingway (6-word story) is considered flash fiction.  You could utilize dishwashing to think up a story in six words, then edit and revise this six word sentence later.  While washing dishes.  That is an incredibly efficient way to use your time.  Of course, there are times when vegetables seem like they have a good idea of life and you just wish to join them, and so you use dishwashing time as veggie time, and in that case, you'll get no judgement from me, actually I do that sometimes too.  

Anyways, what do you think?  Have you tried Flash Fiction?  Let me know in the comments section!

Viola June HFA-DGN