I have been an eager reader of flash stories by Jim Heynen for years. I’ve read The Man Who Kept Cigars Under His Cap, One-Room School House: Stories About the Boys, The Boy’s House: New and Selected Stories as well as his newest collection Ordinary Sins: Stories. You can visit this web page to view a list of his books.

Heynen’s view into human nature and his folksy way of telling stories that illuminate that view are humorous as well as thought provoking. And they teach writers who read the stories much about what we now call “flash” as a specific subgenre of fiction and nonfiction.

Here’s an example:

Go to the Ant, Thou Sluggard
by Jim Heynen, from The Boy’s House: New & Selected Stories

It occurred to the youngest boy, early in the morning when his mind was still swimming in daydreams, that there were two kinds of people in the world. It came to him very clearly: there are people who are always trying to give something, and there are people who are always trying to get something. Givers and getters, he called them in his daydreaming mind. His grandfather was a giver. If you saw him coming, you knew he had something to give, maybe some advice, maybe something he had made for you. A neighbor across the section was just the opposite. He was a getter. He was the one who mowed the grass along the railroad track because he could get that hay free. No wonder people called him a go-getter.

The youngest boy talked about his giver and getter ideas over breakfast. The other boys laughed at him. There are two kinds of people in the world, said one, people who can find their socks and people who can’t. The youngest boy knew which kind he was.

No, said another, there are two kinds of people in the world, people who are so stupid that they think there are only two kinds of people in the world, and people who aren’t that stupid.

Maybe there was another set of two kinds of people, the youngest boy thought: the ones who make fun of and the ones who get made fun of.

The grown-ups put a stop to the talking. You want to talk about getting and giving? All of you get ready for church or we’ll give you something to think about.

Good thing it was a Sunday, so the youngest boy could have plenty of time to be by himself, inside his own mind, while the preacher preached.

But the preacher said something so loud that the youngest boy couldn’t daydream himself away from it: Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.

That probably meant there were two kinds of people in the world: lazy people and workers, but would the workers be the givers or the getters? the youngest boy wondered.

There was an anthill in the grove, so the youngest boy went to the ant that afternoon to consider her ways. All the ants looked like real go-getters, just like the neighbor who tried to get his hands on everything he could get. But the ants didn’t seem to be getting anything for themselves, they were hurrying back home to give what they got, maybe even to the sluggards somewhere deep inside the little world of their ant hill. There are three kinds of people in the world, the youngest boy announced over supper: people who get, and people who give, and people who get to give. Where did he pick that up? said one of the grown-ups.

Let’s talk about this tale:

The main character is called “the youngest boy.” That phrase draws our sympathy and engagement with a child who is differentiated from the others. It makes us want to know more about him. Soon we learn he enjoys the privacy of his own thoughts. That his idea comes to him early one morning while he is still “swimming in his daydreams” draws us closer to our own memories of waking up in childhood and having time to think. Because of this, we don’t crave knowing more about this character and setting. We are ready to find out what his thought was. And the author delivers here—in a tone that demonstrates the boys’ logic, we find out what the thought that struck him was and how he makes sense of it. That is the way of flash—engage the reader immediately and provide just the right details to keep the reader reading and not feeling more info is necessary at the moment; concentrate on the important details of the emotional or ironic moment of the story and it seems to tell itself.

With the next paragraph’s first sentence, we make a quick transition in time and as we learn the boy talks about his idea over breakfast. We learn there are brothers who tease him and categorize him in a mundane way and he feels humility, but after the adults put an end to the teaching, another plot point arrives with another location—church—and time to return to his thinking. I believe we cheer this youngest one on—in the face of being belittled, he preservers, a trait we would all like to consider we have, too.

Givers and getters, lazy people, workers and, then, go-getters—it is a complicated world, isn’t it? Remember as a child going alone to close by nature to just check things out? And so our youngest does just that in the afternoon after church, to watch the ant and “her ways,” his philosophical puzzling still very much on his mind. Voila! There are three categories—those that give, those that get, and those that get to give! And we move in time now to dinner where the youngest discusses his findings. Then the short, short story ends with an adult who is incredulous as adults so often are at the wisdom of children. The ending sentence of the story is “I wonder where he got that?” and the reader remembers the title, a line from scripture, “Go to the Ant, Thou Sluggard.” We infer something more about his child. He employs the language of church as he independently and tenaciously puzzles out the world for himself.

I am refreshed and inspired by this flash story that travels across the various hours and activities of one Sunday amidst a particular family, all the while staying true to its purpose of sharing the perspective of an interested and interesting child. Ultimately, the story reminds us organically of our own creativity and processes because language in the hands of Heynen works to tell a tale with a moral too deep to be summed up. The moral rises up out of that last sentence in the story, a question that one of the grownups asks at the table, “Where did he pick that up?” You can see him shaking his head as he asks that, can’t you? Ironically, grown ups don’t always appreciate another’s, especially a child’s, thoughts, ponderings, intelligences and urge to learn on their own, morally as well as intellectually. Adults would rather tell others what is true than allow and admire the thought processes of another. I always feel, when reading Heyen’s work, that I have been informed and asked to remember something essential about the creative life.

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Now let’s turn to how you can use this story’s inspiration to write personal essays and flash from your own experience.

Here are four writing ideas for you inspired by Jim Heynen’s story:

1. Do you remember a philosophy you considered when you were a grade school kid? State it. Where were you as you considered the ideas? Did you tell others? What did they say? Were you ridiculed or disregarded? Did you watch for empirical evidence as proof of your philosophy? Was there at least one person who admired your thinking? How did you learn that this person did
2. Do you remember puzzling over a philosophy adults shared with you when you were young? What were the details of that philosophy? Can you state it in the adult’s words? Evoke the way you puzzled over this philosophy trying to accept or disprove it. Where were you as you did that? What did you see and hear, taste and touch and smell seeking evidence? Who did you discuss your findings with? What was the end result—did you accept or not accept the philosophy? How has that affected your life?
3. Do you think of the world now in the same philosophical terms you learned from adults when you were a child, one that seemed original to you or one that was a dominate philosophy in your family? Give examples of the way you followed that philosophy as a child and even into adulthood. Have you changed your philosophy? What did you encounter that caused that change? If you haven’t changed your philosophy, how does it continue to inform the way you live?
4. If you were to divide the world into kinds of people, what would the kinds of people be? Illustrate each of those kinds. What has it meant to you to encounter them or think in this way? Which category do you place yourself in? Why? How has that affected your life?