thematic analysis of my recent flash writing, or: Can't War Sleep Identity

the new 52/250 theme issue is up: SLEEP!
the story i have in it is: Dimension #4

also, the 24/7 folded word august-word-camp now moved from 24 days of daily writing to the revision stage. and after 24 days of daily free-theme-format writing creativity, my analytic mind kicked in: on day 25, i took some time to list all the texts i wrote from day 1 - 24. this list now lead to some thematic realizations, as visualized in the diagram above, explanations below:

the formats of the 24 days of writing were open by format and theme. after putting the list together, i also did a quick statistic by format. that was the first surprise. turned out, i wrote 12 x flash fiction, 6 x poetry, 3 x micro fiction, 3 x twitter. i in the start, i guessed i would rather stick to the micro formats for the 24 days. seems the daily writing moved me into fiction-write-mood.

story list + diagram by themes
in the next step, i focused on the stories, and added the stories i wrote for the weekly 52/250 flash theme issue to the list. then i added a "theme" column, and noted down the general theme the story was written for, or relates to. surprise #2: the weekly flash writing themes of 52/250 develop an own thematic life in my writing. there are 3 stories that relate to this weeks's theme: "Sleep". same with last week's theme: "Can't Wait". [note: the 52/250-stories are marked blue in the diagram, just like the theme-bubbles that came from 52/250: Can't Wait, Sleep, Red meat, Opposites].

from there, i moved to some current calls for submissions, and found the same effect: after reading the "Boundary" anthology of Editions Bibliothekas, i made a note to submit to their upcoming anthology, which has the theme: "War". and there is the "Identity" theme, which is reocurring since a while, and will be the theme of the next blueprintreview issue (call is now up). now looking at the texts, there actually are 4 texts that thematically connect to the War-theme, and 4 that connect to the identity theme.

thematic overlaps
there also are overlaps: the story "Eighteen" both belongs to the "Can't Wait" and "War" group. the story "Anti/cipation" belongs to "Can't Wait" and "Identity". and "Retro" belongs to Identity and "Sleep". the most surprising thematic cross-over still is "Slices", the story that tells about the cold war in Berlin, and was sparked by the weekly flash theme "Red Meat".

for some stories, of course, i had the theme in mind while writing. for some, i only realized the thematic connections while sketching the diagram. it will be interesting to see how this thematic chain develops now.

links + calls + note
here, some direct links to thematic stories that are online:
- White (identity + Union of Opposites = a story about a psychology test)
- Slices (war + red meat = a story about the cold war and the reunion of Berlin)
- Queue (can't wait, a waiting / garden story)

my focus now will shift a bit from writing to revising, and also to submitting, i already browsed some current calls, sent out first submissions, and put a list up in the blueprint blog (calls, calls, calls).

and some happy notes:
"Retro" already got accepted by Melusine magazine, and "Eighteen" already got accepted for the Folded "Freight" anthology. (interesting: both are "overlap" stories)
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