The lovely people at Magic Oxygen have made
a gallery of all their shortlisted writers'
faces. See that photo of me there on the right, with the rather red lips? Well they've gone kind of BLACK in the version in the gallery. I used to wear black lipstick - or was it dark blue - when I was fifteen and a 'Sweaty' - that meant I listened to Nirvana instead of dance music. The gallery also has info about the other 19 writers I'm shortlisted with, and it's nice to be amongst such a fine bunch. Have a look
here.
I entered
Bare Fiction's Flash Prize a few months ago, didn't get on the shortlist and had already enjoyed marking an X next to it in my submission diary (photo of that in
last post). But I had an email yesterday to say I did make it onto the longlist of 30 out of 461. One of those '
close but no cigar' moments, which bring a mix of feelings. Ultimately good ones, though.
On my days off I've been enjoying a bit of time with my teenage
diaries - here we are together.
For ages I've been meaning to get them into some kind of chronological order, so now each one (there are over 70) has a small white sticker on the front saying when the diary started and ended. I rediscovered some stories I wrote back then too - horrible stories - mostly about love. Two characters, Megan and Jake, plague nearly everything with their smug creative relationship. Jake is always playing the piano and Megan is always off somewhere writing poetry.
Although I'm a writer and my other half is a musician I absolutely do not accept that I have somehow forced a life path identical to the way I thought it would be when I was 14. No. No. No.
Oh crap.
4 comments:
Amazing that you were writing at such a young age and that you kept all those diaries. Did life turn out as you had hoped? I just started writing after I retired.
Congratulations on your successes.
Hi L - what a great question... to which the answer is too long but briefly it's both no and yes - and I might have to blog about that at some point. Thank you! And thanks for your congratulations. Hope things are going well for you.
Congratulations on both the longlist (I didn't make it onto any of the lists at Bare Fiction, bah) and the shortlisting. Fingers crossed for you when it comes to announcing the final result.
Hilarious that you have become the protagonist in the stories your teenage self penned. Good work.
I realised it as I read the story out loud to Mario, which was quite funny. But Megan was actually a bit of a cow (NOT LIKE ME THEN) and was quite patronising about Jake's efforts at composing music. Luckily for him, she was on hand to help, and would provide him with poems to use as lyrics. What a gal.
Thanks for the congrats, and sorry you didn't get on a list. But you ARE in Writers' Forum this month - and I'm off to get my copy today. Woohoo!
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