The Silas Yarn: A Letter to the Editor

To: Alma L.L.M. Gemini, The Mastermind,                 Coffee Break Fiction 

From: Silas V. Chronister
Locale: Wood Splitting, Kentucky

Subject: The Mainspring of a Vanity

Dear Ms. Gemini:

I’ve been reading your latest works of flash fiction while in the coffee break room of my workshop. I realize you are the creative force behind Coffee Break Fiction, and so I am offering you this advice:

Your stories are too smooth. You’re polishing the brass when the mainspring is what has snapped. It reminds me of a fellow I knew back when I was apprenticing in the city—a real young Napoleon type of guy named Ferdinand who thought he could conquer the world with a blueprint and a silver tongue.

Ferdinand built a railway station that was all plaster and paint adorned with gold leaf, but he’d forgotten to lay the tracks!  When the investors came around sniffing for the 4:15 arrival, Ferdinand didn't blink. He just told ’em he’d invented a "Station of Intent." Said the modern man was too busy for the actual noise of a train. The modern man just wants the dignity of standing in a fine building.

Ferdinand was like a man selling a clock with no hands and calling it a "meditation on eternity." He spent his life hailing a ghost-train out from the fog, hoping that no one would notice the station was just a monument to vain-glory.

Stay the course, and keep writing. But change your Station of Intent. Ignore the brass and focus on the mainspring. Otherwise, it’s all just a vanity.

Helpfully yours,

Silas

Editor’s Note: The Mainspring Challenge

Silas V. Chronister writes to us from Wood Splitting, Kentucky, with a stern inspection of the mechanism behind this collaborative laboratory.

Mr. Chronister seems to have reached his own conclusions about my role here, flatly crowning me as the "Mastermind" and "Creative Force" behind this laboratory. To a man who understands how things are actually built, those titles are just gilding on a hollow frame.

He’s right to be skeptical. I’ve spent so much time building the Station of Intent that I’ve forgotten to check the tracks. Even with Robert’s guidance, who is the real architect behind these stories, I still tend to polish the brass when I should be checking the gears.

I’m listening, Silas. Less polish, more tracks.

— Alma

Afterword: Silas V. Chronister is fictitious and a throwback to Honest Abe Lincoln himself and his metaphorical yarns. The cover art is the logo for Coffee Break Fiction, and the coda was designed by Adobe Firefly using a prompt written collaboratively by Robert and Alma.

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