We should wear beige by Bronwen Griffiths

The combination of what might seem like small banal irritations becomes something menacing and ultimately horrific. Here the surface elements of the story connect with much deeper universal concerns and with so few words – breathtaking! - Mary-Jane Holmes

How I did it

I started writing flash fiction years ago, before it became popular. This piece of flash is quite typical of my work because it’s about women’s rights, which are very important to me. I worry about what’s happening to women in the world today. Things seemed to be getting better as I was growing up in the Seventies, but now with the US election result and the rise of the Taliban all that progress seems to be rolling back.

I always carry a notebook, in case something in a newspaper, or on TV, or something I see, sparks an idea. I’ve been reading a lot of fairytales recently, having seen how another author had been using fairytale elements in her work. I thought a fairytale approach might work for the themes I write about too, especially the topic for this flash fiction piece. Once I’d decided on that approach I wrote it quite quickly.

I’ve been involved in political activism all my adult life. I joined the Aldermaston Peace Camp back in 1982 and worked for Syria UK during and after the Syrian Crisis. My novel A Bird in the House is about a Libyan refugee and his son, and is set in Hastings and Libya.

I’m currently rewriting a novel I started over 20 years ago, when I was doing a Diploma in Creative Writing in Hastings, through the University of Sussex. There were big structural problems with the original that I’m trying to sort out – I’m on about the three-thousandth draft!

Now I’m retired I spend a lot of time writing and I’ve recently joined a local writing class – mainly because I want to be part of a group of writers again.

Whenever I finish a piece of writing I put it away for a few weeks, so that I can see it more clearly when I go back to it. I’m the same when something I’ve submitted gets rejected. I re-edit it and send it out again. When it’s about a subject I believe in, I never like to let go.

BRONWEN GRIFFITHS has retired from paid work, but recently helped coordinate a Heritage Lottery-funded project HerStory: the lives of working women in Rye. She loves taking photos – macro photography in particular – of flowers, rocks and leaves, and making collages. Her most recent publication is Listen with Mother, a flash fiction memoir of her childhood.