Thursday 3 March 2016

Nonpost slushfest




This blog is in imminent danger of degenerating into a personal slushfest. Because this entry certainly has nothing to do with poetry, imagination, or fiction, and I am not sure whether it at all fits in with the prevailing philosophy at M-i-V (all fictional stuff and please, no smartypants autobiographical snippets of wisdom, ever! Poetry is not the journal of the poet, remember?) But it’s beginning to sound just like one of those exact thingies, that comes with a moral at the tale-end. 


Last year, I found a local writers' outfit and joined up because they had a poets' group within a group, immediately hooked. Last year, I also had to reluctantly bow out of a chance to write some sci-fi at the Write…Edit…Publish blogfest as I was travelling. So I scheduled a non-fiction essay in support (which to my utter amazement/delight came in at the second place, thank you WEP and Alex J Cavanaugh!).  


However, I was definitely not happy at having to give up a shot at sci-fi, not my usual genre to read, or write. A genre that actually scared me silly, to be honest.   


But where there is a whinge, there’s also a way. I bashed and beat the Bahrain Writers Circle January prompts into a second chance, sat down and took a stab at it finally.

The moral? Things work out okay, if I can bring myself to exercise the minuscule amounts of patience I have been allotted. 

~~~

And then of course the ghastly error in coordinates came to light and he packed up his samples and his logs, folded me up with my legs tucked under, and re-boarded the spacecraft for Rexysper, not in the least bit put out. “The more the merrier, Harold, the more the merrier.” 

But as life often turns out, Rexysper was not really merrier.  As soon as we landed, (after triple-checking the coordinates) it was clear the stay was going to be well, in one word, fraught.  The soil on Rexysper, which was like grits of aquamarine, was plastic-repellent.  Something no-one at the C-n-C had predicted.  Earth-like, my front left foot!


Read my story Harold Meets a Stranger on the BWC blog (please scroll down the page, mine's the third title. Incidentally, the other stories are great too). Or read my other, decisively non-sci-fi story of indeterminate genre  - Thrown Off-track, if wannabe sci-fi is not your thing.  And if you can spare the time, please leave your feedback there. I shall be forever...obliged? nah....deeply beholden? utterly indebted? never mind, you know what I mean, don't you? – your words prized far above rubies.










14 comments:

  1. Off to read.
    An invitation into your head (or what you release from it is always worth while).

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    1. Thank you! What I have in my head is mostly pfft- worthy...working towards the patience to weed out the dross :)

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  2. Hi Nila - I'll have to keep it open and be back after the weekend .. trying to hit the road now: and little internet! Good for you for giving Sci-Fi a go ... cheers Hilary

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    1. Safe and happy journeys, Hilary. Have a great weekend!

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  3. That's an excerpt? And here you didn't think you could write science fiction...

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    1. Ya, I didn't think I could, but once I tried to, it was fun, and not half as difficult as I thought it would be.

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  4. Nila, I'm so glad you caught the sci-fi bug at the time of the WEP challenge. I'm off to read now. Go girl!! Nothing wrong with whatever you choose your blog to be...doesn't always have to be madly in verse, lol!

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    1. Haha, it's getting to be madly-out-of-verse almost..

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  5. Interesting excerpt.
    I'm primarily a poet but write short fiction, as well. The two types fit together, somehow. Maybe it is because they're short forms.
    I don't think I could ever be a novelist.

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    1. You never know what you can do till you actually try! Novels are more work though, long term focus, attention intensive. Equally, more rewarding. And have a wider market than poetry :)

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  6. And still one fights to write
    voice heard low
    as others try to yell over it
    judge not self against others
    write of heart
    as always, you did well.

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    1. I'm not sure mine is much of a fight really :) But jokes apart, you are correct - writers write, yellers yell.

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  7. What writer truly has patience in themselves? I haven't found one yet. :)

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    1. True! and not just writers :) thanks for stopping by

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