Lightning Flash Writing

Category: for the love of writing

  • Revision or Archaeology? (FTLOW)

    I’ve been reading a few F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories as part of my project (specifically “The Ice Palace” and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”). I chose to read him this month because it’s the one-year anniversary of Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle, which Janet Dale and I published on April…

  • March Sadness & More (FTLOW)

    This is going live while there are still five hours left in my March Sadness essay’s round 2, and instead of waiting to see if I win or lose, I thought it would be fun to send it while everything is still up in the air and anything can happen,…

  • From March Sadness to Mariah Carey (FTLOW)

    Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about memory, going back as far as my July 2025 Substack, I think. But it makes sense, because the memories in my mind were some good times, and even if they weren’t, they’re over now, so I can see them through rose-colored glasses. When…

  • The Comfort of Old Stories (FTLOW)

    In December, I took a workshop with Kevin Wilson. He gave us some short stories to read and referred to them throughout his lectures, and I felt like I was back in undergrad. Every short story was one I hadn’t read before, which was a major reason I felt like…

  • Christmas & Creativity (FTLOW)

    Adult Allison has never liked Christmas. My first job was working as a graphic designer for a company that made Christmas gift wrap. We were talking about wrapping paper and gift bags year-round. Santas and snowmen and jingle bells were always on my computer screen, and even though our deadlines…

  • It’s Cozy Szn (FTLOW)

    (Just kidding, I hate the “szn” thing almost as much as I hate “In my _ era”) The weather in Memphis is always unpredictable this time of year. It might be scorching hot until December, followed by a random February snowstorm. Or it might be freezing in October and balmy…

  • Places I Never Meant to Be (FTLOW)

    My kid is saving up for a Switch 2 and the pride he seems to feel, simply having that goal, reminded me of what I wanted most when I was slightly younger than he is now: a skateboard. I saved up one hundred dollars and kept the money in a…

  • On Turning 40 (FTLOW)

    I turned forty this month, and earlier this summer, I read All Fours by Miranda July. (The two may not seem connected, but they are.) July writes about midlife as a place full of possibility rather than diminishment, which surprised me. For a long time, I believed that real possibility…

  • Middle School, from the Other Side (FTLOW)

    I recently re-read Forever… by Judy Blume to watch the Netflix show and compare and contrast them on my blog. It made me remember how often I read that book when I was a pre-teen, hoping that if I studied the pages hard enough, I’d learn the secret manual for…

  • Watching the Show From the Sofa (FTLOW)

    Last month, I wrote about getting offline, and I’ve been thinking about it every other day since. I kept thinking I’d just… fade away from Substack after that, not quite announcing my departure while also making it pretty obvious what I was doing. I keep thinking… why am I writing…