My published story ... and other news

It finally arrived!! My short story 'Objects of my Affection' was being published by a literary journal called [untitled] and I have been waiting anxiously for it to come out. Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to the launch last week but was jumping with joy when it arrived in the mail this morning (and to my surprise, a check fell out! Being paid for my writing? Hell yeah!)
You can see my excitement in the photo ... 

I also have two more stories (actually both flash fiction pieces that I have posted on my blog here and here) being published by local literary journals this month and next, so there is a lot of excitement the next few months.
It's really inspiring me to write more.  


In other excitement, I would like to congratulate my friend James Shackell, for selling out his zine at the Sydney fair! You can read all about it on his blog. I knew that kid was going places. 


I have been researching my new writing project the past few weeks, and I interviewed someone about it this morning. I'm getting very close to actually starting writing it. It is my goal for the National Young Writers Month, to finish the story in June. Some other goals I put down was to learn a new word every day (which is part of blog goals up the top, but I haven't been doing so well on that :S) and to read more and blog more. 
I came up with another good story idea, too, that I can't wait to start writing :) 


Speaking of reading. I have gone nuts. Obsessed. Bought 4 books off the book depository this week, and have 4 books from the library, and 4 books that my friend Sari lent me. Good thing I start uni holidays next week!


And to keep on with the excited tone of this post, 
I saw Li Cunxin, author of Mao's Last Dancer,  talk on Friday night (was such an incredible, inspiring talk) and 
I am seeing Michael Connelly talk at the Wheeler Centre on Thursday night! 
AND the Emerging Writers Festival starts this week so I'm super excited. 
Looks like June is going to be a big literary month for me.

Balancing my Reading self and Writing self

Last year, I had a particularly bad reading year. I just lost my reading mojo. I’d get half way through books and lose interest, or I wouldn’t be bothered starting them at all. It was quite upsetting actually. I went from 41 books in 2009, to only 15 last year! 

I could blame the fact that I was overseas for 4 months, or that I was busy with my last semester of uni. But these reasons have never stopped me before.

My reading bug has finally returned to me. I have become unstoppable. Reading in the car (fighting carsickness), reading while walking, reading while my boyfriend gives me puppy dog eyes and begs me to pay him some attention, reading instead of assignments ….

These are my latest purchases. A mixture of journals, YA books, other novels, and my favourite magazine, Frankie.

But I’m struggling to balance reading and writing. 

When I get so into reading, I find that I can’t write. All I want to do is read read read. And I’m so immersed in the world of that novel, that I can’t easily transfer my thoughts to my own writing.

Vice Versa, when I’m writing, I struggle to read. Everything becomes about the world I’m creating, and the people in it. Every spare minute, I’m writing more, researching or editing.

Perhaps that’s why my reading year was so bad last year. I was doing 4 writing subjects at uni and had 12 weeks to write 5 short stories.

Does anyone else struggle to separate their writing and reading self?

My goal is to learn to do both simultaneously. 

I’m going to embrace this time while I’m not working, to get into the habit of waking a bit earlier and writing for at least an hour. And then reading later in the day.

Also, I found this really cute blog, called 3000 books. 

I try to read 50 new books a year, and this blog records my attempts to get a handle on them. Literary grandstanding or the product of an untidy mind? No one knows.

To the numbers: when I started this blog I was 23 years old. The life expectancy for an Australian female is 83 years. 60 reading years left x 50 books = 3000 books.

Why yes, it is very literal. Some might also say it is numerical.

Cute. Gotta pick our reading wisely guys! 

Flash Fiction

I was looking at A.S. Patric's blog this morning (He is a Melbourne based writer) and I read his latest piece of flash fiction. 


I realised just how much I love reading and writing flash fiction. I love the way that in such a small space, with so few words, you can tell a story. A.S. Patric proves just how powerful pieces of flash fiction can be. And it's challenging. You don't have time and plot leaads to reel your reader in. If they aren't in from the start, they aren't in at all. 


I have another writer friend, Rafael S.W who is on the editorial committee for Express Media, who writers wonderful flash fiction, some of which I have been fortunate enough to read. 


So what is Flash Fiction?

• Fiction between 300-1000 words. 
• As with most modern writing, there are no rules in flash fiction. 
• It's usually a small idea that shows complexity, or something larger. 
• There are usually no plot or character set ups. The reader is just thrown in. 
• Flash fiction could be a conversation, an image or a thought. 

Here is a piece of flash fiction I wrote last year while on a weekend writers retreat (Rafael was also there writing flash fiction). I knew the sentence I wanted to start with, and a metaphor I wanted to describe and I went from there. I didn't know how long the piece was going to be. I just wrote and let it take on a life of its own. It turned out to be 402 words. 

She was here

This is how she is dying.  It’s cold and then the bullet penetrates her chest. It settles in the part of her that pulsates, warming in her body like sex, and she starts to leak. They carry her through turbulence on a jagged stretcher, her red confetti dripping on trampled sand, and they take her away.  

It started as love. No, it started as two soldiers who only ‘saw’ each other once they’d lost their uniforms. She cried the first time their skins had touched. He’d shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘this is me’, and she’d fallen into him. His body was soft and curled around her like a baby gripping a finger. He was everything, now, that as a soldier, he wasn’t.

The war receded in their fusion. Champagne bottles replaced pops of grenades and colour coated their memories of military green. Soon they were caught in a different kind of insanity; an obsession that was beyond the choice of love. She was distracted. When he wasn’t there she wrote him letters, and even when together, she’d think about being with him. They’d go for walks down the same streets over and over.  They’d name things that didn’t have names and then laugh at themselves. They created their own world around them.

They made love moving quickly in each other, their hands grabbing firm at faces, hair and torsos, not knowing where to touch and wanting to touch everywhere. They found each other’s scars, traced them and moved harder. After, she wished it were slower, the way romantic sex is meant to be. But he holds her tighter after each time, leans his head against hers and breathes hard, his lips lingering near hers. Then he gives her the necklace he always wore, a bullet on a dirty chain and it sits between her breasts.

She forgets about the war and it finds her when she’s lost without him on a paved street near the desert. She was remembering the way they first kissed, and the feel of him pressing himself against her. Then the war comes, bullets fire and shells fall through the smoke. Soldiers take her away, her body leaking the dregs of her love on a military green stretcher. Winter starts to arrive and the warmth of her fades.

She was here, he thinks after. She was here, and then she was gone.

The story is based off truth, in a metaphoric sense. 

So has anyone written flash fiction?

What are your thoughts on flash fiction?

I challenge everyone to write a story between 300 and 1000 words.