Regular visitors to this site – I’m certain there’s a paradox tied up within those five words – will have noticed my apparent lowering in productivity of late…

Indeed, one would be correct in asserting that my sudden increase from one, two, or three, to six weekly articles without fail, has taken a hit.

…That’s all it is though, an apparent reduction, so get off my case. It’s a bit like saying: ‘Apparently when they built the Leaning Tower of Pisa it was at perfect right angles to the horizon but shit, I mean look at it now, I dunno…’

Actually it’s nothing like that at all but still, please, off my case. I’ve been doing what I do occasionally when not writing/editing/working myself into a ball of stress regarding the ‘Pride Series’ – that’s the cute title I’ve allocated my recent two-but-soon-to-be-three novel sequence. (I use the term ‘recent’ because, believe it or don’t, I’ve been in this position before, with other novel sequences I mean, just that they were never as good as I believe my ‘Pride Series’ to be; nor had they been allocated such a cute collective title.)

In fact I’ve been trying to write short stories.

I used to be good at short stories – says me – then I started writing novels and became all full of myself with arrogance and conceit and delusions of how transcendent my own writing ability was…

What I find most comical about the above sentence is how, in one brief line I’ve managed to perfectly depict Brian Griffon of Family Guy.

…In truth that never happened; probably I made people uncomfortable in the early days with claims of having written the greatest novel the world had ever seen in Shapeshifter – my third attempt – which was only really half true because while I still believe it to be a reasonable novel, in reality the world will likely never see Shapeshifter at all.

Now and again, through the email of a writers’ group I once attended, I come upon an entry into an official short story competition and in fairness, the prize money is usually pretty appealing. The problem is that every other entry I’ve put forward has been either a rapidly adjusted excerpt from some other, decidedly longer story, or if I do write it especially, it’s generally thrown together so quickly that I never hold out much hope of doing any good…

The issue here that I seem to forget is while I consider my own abilities brilliant, most other applicants will be equally passionate, more experienced, better educated, more highly skilled thus better writers than I am.

…Therefore I’m never terribly surprised when I don’t.

Given my current abundance of free time though, fried brain notwithstanding, I decided to put a little effort into this one; the theme ‘A Convincing Lie’ I feel could have been better selected but no, I’m going to give it a nudge anyway.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, I’ve already written one, I feel it was pretty good, I’m going for a second, it’s been hellish, I’ve just been through a classic springtime cold, my brain feels numb, but you know me, that’s how I roll.

Shit I’m just glad it’s Friday.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Shaz Torey

Photography by Lemme Lone