What makes someone a writer anyway? Like now, I’m putting my thoughts onto this screen like I would tell someone if they were sitting right in front of me. Does that make me a writer?

Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a busy airport. Passengers crowd past you in every direction. Looking up at the arrivals and departures; all flights are delayed.  Suddenly, the entire board changes — rows and columns of numbers and letters flip with the familiar clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the old, analog displays — revealing only destinations on your bucket list, as the throngs of weary travelers part before you like the Red Sea.

That’s how I felt today.

I’m not a perfect person. I make no claims of sainthood. Here, if you like, is a litany of some of my faults: I’m an arrogant, know-it-all bitch. I’m stubborn, often to a fault. I hold people to extremely high standards. I’m inclined to fits of pettiness, and I tend to hold grudges basically forever. Despite having spent years preaching to my students constantly about how there’s no shame in needing help, I’m lousy at asking for it for myself. I don’t have much interest in privacy. I will brook almost no opposition to my right to do as I fucking well please.

Chicago native Nic Souder is one of those people for me. A podcaster, a poet, poetry show host, visual artist and acquaintance (not at all in that order). One whom I admire because he manages to use his darker experiences and the everyday to lace everything he touches with a kind of mad hipster magic. 

He was gracious enough to let me steal him away after work for a few beers and a long chat, heavily abridged and presented here in celebration with National Poetry Month, about process and other creative curiosities…

Flash Fiction has its own day. And everybody knows, if a thing has its very own celebratory day, then it might be worth paying attention to, if only for a brief (or extremely brief) time.