I decided to keep this post separate so as not to overload anyone with information. Moreover I naturally feel that this topic has to have a post by itself as it was the only thing this week that made my chest burst with pride and happiness. Not literally of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be alive writing this blog. Ha!
I was going to despondently report on Sunday that my short story Wilted must have been chewed up in the Recycling Bin icon, as I had not heard from Tindal Street Press all last month. I suppose now it was a good thing that my laptop was infected with Spyware all weekend. After an exhausting first day at work on Monday, I threw myself by the heater and pushed the laptop open to check my mail. My heart jerked when I found an email from Rikhi, one of the editors of the ‘Asian Enough’ anthology.
He told me that they had received plenty of high quality submissions and the reason why it took so long to respond to everyone was because shortlisting had been so difficult what with so many brilliant stories.
And because of this, I was shocked when he wrote that my story (see the blog WILTED in the August section) had been put forward for the final round of consideration. I was so overwhelmed; I went on my abandoned Facebook account to notify my friends of the news.
The response has been lovely, even one of my Creative writing lecturers congratulated me and he never comments on my statuses!
This is going to sound cheesy, but I don’t care, I just have to say it. From the bottom of my heart I thank Chris and Janet for reading the piece and giving me much needed feedback. I must also thank Chris for his script, which inspired me to write again during a time when I was suffering from writer’s fatigue. And last but not least, I want to thank Nicola for encouraging me to write this piece. If she had not mentioned the anthology and threw out some vague ideas to get me started, Wilted would not exist.
The final selections will be made in mid-November, so I have some time to wait for a response. Knowing my luck, I might not get picked, as there is so much competition, but I’m just glad that the editors loved it enough to shortlist it.
Other than that, I’ve sent off a short story I did in first Year University today to the Grapevine, an ex pat magazine. Again, Nicola encouraged me to do this, for she has sent a few of her stories off to the magazine, which she knew of as her sister is one of the people who read it.
The short story was written during the module, ‘Craft of Writing’, in which we were taught to craft a short story. I was made to write it in a week, for my lecturer wasn’t too keen on the story I had given her to critique a week before the deadline. I don’t blame her now; it was an embarrassment of a tale which involved an acrobat taking revenge on her lion tamer lover. Anyways, she said that I was a good enough writer to write about something real. So, I decided to write about a pretentious woman who is slave to society’s shallow expectations of her. You could call it slightly semi-autobiographical, for at college when I was doing my Textile course; I was sucked into buying the most expensive clothes I could afford and styling them immaculately: gold shoes matching my bag and a khaki jacket that looked fresh and clean against my beige top and light jeans. As it was only a year ago or so since it happened (at the time), I could clearly remember the judgemental looks from other people and the fear of disapproval from the other guys and girls studying fashion.
No need to worry these days of course. I’m much happier now that I’m doing something that I enjoy and is very much me. In fact, I’m so content and anxiety-free at this very moment, I’m going to go and watch Disney’s The Jungle Book now with my family. Since Katie Waissel sang ‘Wanna Be like You’ on the X Factor, my dad has been wondering where our VRS copy of the film was, since it’s one of his favourite films of all time. Luckily, we found it over the weekend and watched it on Saturday and again on Sunday. Just comes to show how addictive it truly is.
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