When I first set out writing Finding acorns over a year ago I was fascinated with the creative writing process (and still am). But it seems my blog has found its feet in the short fiction world. Through no badgering or coercing, but rather that it found its own way there.
Writing is a bit like that for me. As an avid free writer I don't set out with a destination in mind. I'm happy to let the characters dictate how many words they need to tell their story.
I guess at some stage in the process (in my early writing years) I thought that one day I would write a novel. But the moment I set off on that path of telling stories I realised that my style was more condensed. I was happy to do away with pages of description and provide just enough detail for the reader to get a sense of place and fill in the white space.
I remember in London stumbling across the work of Maxence Fermine in a dark timber shelved bookstore on Fulham Road that served tangy, sweet lemon cake. I've read Fermine's fable Snow five times and the third in the trilogy; The Beekeeper maybe a few less. The same is true of the other short fiction in my bookcase - Swallow the Air (Tara June Winch), Mama Kuma (Deborah Carlyon), The Sitters (Alex Miller)... In fact, The Sitters is the only of Miller's work I finished reading.
More recently I've been reading short story collections and literary magazines as time to read becomes more precious with little acorns around.
And just the other day I found a cafe in one of Brisbane's hidden laneways where copies of a hand-bound zine we for sale in a vintage suitcase on the counter. It followed a discovery of an old friend who hangs out at Shelbyville and has created a fabulous zine - Li'l Laundromatic. This discovery that writing can merge with design and doesn't have to be the stock standard books we see on bookstore shelves was liberating. It can be small. It can be hidden. It may contain white space. But it has a lot to say - beyond the words and in the places where it exists.
On that note, I hope you like the new design and the place my blog and I find ourselves - exploring the world of short fiction.
Comments