Breaking the Rule

I broke my rule last night and wrote a flash piece. Now this may not seem like such a bad thing, but as I was writing it I thought of several more ideas for flash pieces or shorts. It's like I opened the door on distraction here.
It's partly because I have not been able to make time for the novel in two weeks. A trip to NY last weekend and now Easter festivities will take a big chunk out of this one.
The flash piece was also pretty didactic, probably not what the flash sites want anyway.
How do you bite back the need to instruct readers in a story? Can the political and the criminal be combined in a 700 word piece effectively? Who does this effectively even in a longer piece?