I look up, into the sky. But no learned finger joins celestial dot-to-dots. I look through (what I think is) Orion’s arms. There are hundreds, thousands:
all visible to the naked eye on a clear night.
We used to live in London: clarity is novelty. But here, just me: adrift, lost, since our paths and our stars uncrossed. Staring at the moon –
the etymological root of lunatic is moon-sick
– a vague, solemn emptiness stares back; uncaring, forever reflecting. And the stars tonight are dead light; energy burnt, spent years before. But now, still: I’ll love you, miss you, despairingly.
The first line of this blog post is the first line in each short story in the Summer 2011 edition of The First Line, a literary journal based in the USA.
I’ve read several copies of said journal. It’s a very good journal.
The first issue of any magazine that I submitted a piece for was The First Line, Vol 12. Issue 2, in which the first line was Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old-fashioned way.
The first journal that rejected a piece of my writing was The First Line, when I submitted a piece with the first line was Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old-fashioned way.
Having recently re-read it, I can’t blame them. But that was last year.
In the meantime I’ve spent another year at University studying Literature and Creative Writing.
In the meantime, The First Line has had several editions published, all with different first lines.
And then, while trying to write something, anything, as I had a really big Uni assignment due in and I had the old writers block malarkey, I started writing, as a distraction, a story with the first line “We need to talk.”
If you’d like to read by short story ‘Already’ please pop over to The First Line shop, where you can purchase a PDF for US$2 or order one in the excitingly revolutionary new ‘Paper’ format for US$4. Bargain.
Anyway, while it’s fantastic to be ‘in print’ and ‘published’ and ‘a writer’, it’s all a bit surreal and the first step on a long journey and a great impetus and all that.
And I’m a massive Belle & Sebastian fan, and I had this wonderful song in my head the entire time that I tried to write ‘Already’.
So, Alice realised with alacrity, this is losing your virginity. The boy between her legs grunted; not in agreement (he wasn’t psychic),it’s just what boys do,she reasoned. His rigorous thrusting seemed primitively bestial to Alice, but she didn’t know any better. She’d once given drunken head to some man in the park after way too much Malibu, but that was all.
Alice was only doing this because waitressing was boring her. Sadly, his monochromatic, lacklustre lovemaking couldn’t dispel the ennui. Maybe I’ll give girls another try, she thought, rearranging her uniform in the staffroom mirror. Less messy.
It's been a very formative year for my writing. Last year was really about experimentation: whereas this year has been honing and fine-tuning and developing my own style and voice and tone and all those kind of things.
The last assignment was to hand in the first 4000 words of a 'novel'. My 'novel'.
It's not the novel I thought I was going to write, but darn it if it ain't shaping up quite nicely.
Think I'm going to have to finish it - the three people who've read the first chapter all want to read more, so I can't disappoint my public now, can I.
Well I can, as this blog is a long-winded way of saying I am going to be doing a lot of writing, but not as much blogging - although, to be fair, my blogging is a tad sporadic at best.
Anyways, instead of reading things by me, go and buy some proper books. Like Gold by Dan Rhodes, which is my favourite novel at the moment. A charming story set in a seaside village in beautiful, raggedy Pembrokeshire, with lots of beer and walking and biscuits and funny old men and the deep complications of relationships and the importance we place on traditions and GOLD and tinned spaghetti on toast and watching contact lenses dance in a variety of styles and pub quizzes...
It captures all of that in a very humourous manner, and yet as you turn the last page OHMYGOD. I love the two other Rhodes books I've read, Anthropology and Timoleon Vieta Come Home: Gold takes all the humour and pathos and wonder from both of these and spraypaints it all into shining sunlight smiles and rainy winter days.
Oh, and one more thing, check out the brilliant Literary mag The First Line, which I've found a wonderful source of comfort and inspiration over the last year or so.
If you like the kind of short story that I write, then you *might* want to look out for their forthcoming Summer 2011 edition. Just saying, like ;)
