Micro fiction and the Steam Tomato

 It's called many things: 'short, short fiction', 'micro fiction', 'flash fiction', 'nano fiction' and other names.
 In essence, it is the writing of a complete short story in a tiny number of words. This can be anything from 1 000 words to 100 or less, depending on the definition chosen by the writer.
 Arguably, the most famous piece of micro fiction is Ernest Hemingway's "Baby Shoes" complete "novel" in just six words: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
 I wrote about this story in this blog post.
 My interest in the technique was piqued by a story I came across about Franki Elliot, a writer in Chicago and Los Angeles who sets up her typewriter on the street and writes short stories on demand for passersby.
 They give her a topic and she hacks out a story on the spot, for which they pay what they want. She's become something of a media celebrity and I thought the concept was pretty cool.
 I wondered if I was capable of doing something like that, if I could come up with something creative, when put on the spot. Using a manual typewriter also means there was no opportunity to correct or revise.
 So I set up the "Steam Tomato" and got my wife and son to call out a couple of random topics.
 I've scanned and posted two short stories. (I will post more in future.) The topic is at the top of the sheet of paper.
 Did I succeed? That's for the reader to judge. I like them and it was a lot of fun - and the ultimate nerd, party game.