Keen

Two writer friends discuss the difficulties of getting published.

“You need a good beginning.”
“How about, It was a dark and stormy night?”
“No! Cliché! Cliché! Cliché!”
“You talk about clichés with those exclamation marks? Wash your prose out with soap and water.”
“The WP will do it. Find and replace; search and destroy…”
“I prefer pen and ink to seduce the muse.”
“Green ink, perchance?”
“As it happens, yes.”
“That’ll bring your agent out in a rash. Green ink attests to your mad and uncompromising writerly genius.”
“Since you come to mention it…”
“You’re too keen; don’t want it so much.”
“I was only kidding about the green ink. Most agents take submissions by email now.”
“The eSlush pile.”
“ha ha look no punctuation”
“As exciting as a stale kipper.”
“Who eats kippers these days?”
“You know what I mean!”
“You and your petillant punctuation.”
“Ooh, purple!”
“Not shiny?”
“Er, no.”
“Okay, you tell me the rules of writing.”
“I shall.”
“Go on.”
“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.”
“Obfuscation won’t get you anywhere.”
“Me? No, but it got him to the top.”
“Who?”
“W. Somerset Maugham.”
“And the secret of his success was…?”
“He followed the rules.”

Flash fiction, keyword keen, limit 200 words, actual 198.

Image courtesy of Microsoft Clipart.