I published this post yesterday before succumbing to a fit of chronic overthinking (it’s a habit of mine). Anyway, I looked at what I’d written and decided that it sounded less like a totally fascinating description of my complex portfolio of a life and more like an extended whinge. After all, any working mother (to […]
Well, that was an odd year for writing, that’s for sure. Some very good things happened, certainly, but a lot of things didn’t, and I’m only just beginning to work out why. The first amazingly good thing to happen was that I found a publisher for my second short story collection, Dip Flash. I’m particularly excited […]
Inevitably, once I’d hit the “Publish” button on my last post, it struck me that there were a whole load of things I’d meant to say but had forgotten. Or to put it another way, the post itself wasn’t actually ready for the world. So here are a few more thoughts on the subject of […]
Considering its significance in the life of a writer, we really don’t talk enough about failure. This is a shame, because failure is a good thing. Things are sometimes meant to fail. They can fail for any number of reasons. For one thing, the world may not be ready for them. This is a tough one, and all […]
Is it that time of year already? Apparently it is. A week tomorrow (June 25th) is National Flash Fiction Day, 2016. I think I’m right in saying this is the fifth incarnation of the event, which suggests an impressive level of commitment from Calum Kerr and his loyal band of organisers. As ever, there was […]
And so this year’s Fish campaign draws to a close, with longlistings in the short story and flash categories and (yay!) a shortlisting in the poetry category. I didn’t make much of a fuss about the longlistings, because the Fish longlists do tend to be rather long, but I’m quite pleased about the shortlisting, given […]
Well, I didn’t get any further than the shortlist. But I still won some cool swag (I’ve got a couple of them already, but the rest are all new). And here’s my piece, published today with some very nice comments from the judges. Oh all right, if you absolutely insist. This is what they said: […]
Well, then. I seem to have made it through to the next stage. This is all rather splendid, because it means that whatever happens, my piece will be published on the Thresholds website. It also means that whatever happens, I’ll win something. I’d completely forgotten there were prizes for all the shortlistees, and to be […]
Quiet here, isn’t it? The reasons for my silence are not entirely unrelated to the terror alluded to in my previous post, which has induced one of my (thankfully quite rare) episodes of frozen brain. Anyway, I had some good news today from the people who run the excellent Thresholds annual feature-writing competition. Last year I […]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I still don’t really understand poetry. With fiction, I can read most things and have a decent stab at working out what they’re going on about, however opaque or experimental. But there is a sizeable body of poetry that eludes me completely, and I’m forced into a […]