When you don't have any talent, you go to study medicine, that's what a college professor used to tell us. He died, may he rest in peace. It seems I have no talent. Every day from 8 to 15 I listen to people. In the evening, before bed, their life stories come to my mind. No, I'm not a psychiatrist. Life often beats the movie. The death of Mr. Lăzărescu? Not only. Soap operas, heart breaking romances at the nursing home, detective stories, disinherited. If you are out of script ideas, give me a call.
(Translated by Tania Diniță / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In June 2023, the group has 11,430 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
