Overheard

An old lady in a coffee shop, to her coffee drinking companion:

"Now, I need you to do me a favour. Do you get the Advertiser? Right. I need you to look for something for me. You can probably guess what I'm getting at. If there's a certain death announcement, cut it out for me. No, he's not dead yet. Look, it's a long story, just cut it out if it's there."


I heard this (she had a loud voice) before I looked up to see where it was coming from. I actually thought the lady was speaking on the phone, but when I looked she was addressing her friend. I'm sure the real-life situation isn't as crazy as she made it sound, but it was very intriguing so obviously I had to transcribe it there and then.

"Oh hey so I love you! Oh, no, I just sicked it up."

Maybe the strangest title I've used so far for a short story. But I like it.

A while ago I wrote about my experience of taking part in The Art House Co-op Fiction Project back in April/May. Today I got a notification to say the notebook I submitted has been digitized and is now available to read online.

Oh hey so I love you! Oh, no, I just sicked it up is a light-hearted story about being young and being dumped. It's semi-auto-biographical, based on a long-ago experience of breaking up with my first boyfriend when I was 17. I didn't set out to write that story, but it grew as I made notes for the chosen theme of my notebook (Inside/Outside) as that age-old line came into my head: 'I love you, I'm just not in love with you.'

So we fall in love, we fall out of love, and the poor buggers who stay consistently in love sometimes get dumped. And sometimes they do ridiculous things after they've been dumped, like decide it hasn't really happened just so they don't have to think about it for a bit. Then they face it again, and like any bad experience, it feels too big, too impossible to deal with. Then, a spark of light might show, and it will probably sod off again fairly quickly but it was there, and it will come back, and it will join up with other bits of light to make you feel better.

This is the first page, click here to read the rest (a further 27 pages).

Stand by your ban

Well, it's more like a challenge than a ban.

For as long as I feel like it, the only writing I'll be doing will be on my book. No short story-ing, no entering competitions. Not for too long, you understand. Maybe a month.

Why would I do this? Well, I really want to get some momentum going on my book project and I think I need the focus.

I'll let you know how I go... it's been 3 days thus far.

la la la.