Dan invites Nancy Stohlman back on Writing Remix to discuss recording the audiobook for her award-winning book Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, the growing genre of Flash Fiction, the importance of building a creative community to recover from burnout, doing promotion for her book during COVID-19 quarantine in 2022, and so much more. This episode was recorded on April 20th, 2022.
Nancy Stohlman is the author of six books including After the Rapture (2023), Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities (2018), The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014), The Monster Opera (2013), Searching for Suzi: a flash novel (2009), and Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction (2020), winner of the 2021 Reader Views Gold Award and re-released in 2022 as an audiobook. Her work has been anthologized widely, appearing in the Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and The Best Small Fictions 2019, as well as adapted for both stage and screen. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and holds workshops and retreats around the world. Find out more at http://www.nancystohlman.com
People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode
- 54. Going Short w/ Nancy Stohlman
- Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman
- Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction (Audio Book)
- Natalie Goldberg
- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
- Jack Kerouac
- After the Rapture by Nancy Stohlman
“I think that’s really what the audio books do, in some ways it’s cross pollinating a whole other form and bringing in a whole different sort of reader.”
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-Nancy Stohlman
“You know, we can study a text on the page. We can reverse engineer it. We can break it open. We can mimic it. We can do all these things, but I think listening to it through the ear just kind of brings in a whole other host of body wisdom.”
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-Nancy Stohlman
“So often, creative people create these artifacts, these great products, and then they freeze when it comes to, ‘how do I find the people that I wanted to talk to about this,’ and it all goes under this umbrella of promotion [and] self promotion. Yet, I think of it more as how do I find the people that I’m trying to serve? You know, how do I find the people that need what I’ve got? Because I made it for them. And if they don’t know that I have it, then neither one of us is winning here.”
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-Nancy Stohlman
“I really wanted to, as you say, honor and validate the people who’ve been building the genre [of flash fiction] and speak to new people who are like, what is flash fiction”
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-Nancy Stohlman
“Often I think when people are burned out, what they’ll do is they’ll take a class, right? […] But I can tell you as a person who offers many classes, there’s always some people who sign up and they never show up to the class. And I know that this is not because they’re forgetful. It’s because they’re burned out. They don’t really need me to give them homework, right? They don’t really need more exercises. What they need is to play [and] delight.”
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-Nancy Stohlman
Episode 101 Transcript
This episode was recorded on April 20th, 2022. The theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher, join the newsletter for a bunch of extras (a Note From Dan, episode-specific writing prompts, and book recommendations, & follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod & Instagram @WritingRemixPod.
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Writing Remix Podcast 
“They don’t really need more exercises. What they need is to play [and] delight.” I love this quote!
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Thank you Valerie for the like and the comment. I love this quote too. So good. If you can, please help the pod out with a 5-star rating on Spotify and Apple. THANK YOU!!!!!
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