I am a paid author, thank you please very much

Yay!

I got my massive 25-pound check today!

My first writing earnings ever :)

Neil Gaiman on books, life & death

“My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of ‘Gone With the Wind’, and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It’s actually one of the things that you live and die for.”

Neil Gaiman

If I should have a daughter...I'd want her to be like Sarah Kay

Two beautiful poems to frame a moving speech about moving past fear of yourself towards self-expression.
Sarah Kay's voice just brings you to tears, she's so full of passion

Globalshortstories.net competition - 2nd place

I got second place aka highly commended at a competition I entered in February :)
The story is a sort of metaphor for drugs and creativity and I was inspired both by Bruno Mars' song of the same name, Dreamtaker, and the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat's life.


The review makes me think they're talking about someone else, haha, but I'm so pleased.


Our highly commended writer, earning £25, comes from Paris, France, and is Deana Mundell, for Dreamtaker, of which Fiona says: “This is the stuff of nightmares and has a quirkiness which engaged me from the start. It recalled the reversal of fortunes in that classic movie ‘Nightmare Alley,’ which I saw only once when I was nine years old and yet the vivid impression of almost every scene has stayed with me ever since. The use of language is suitably economic and serves to highlight the very dark subject matter. Well done.”


http://www.globalshortstories.net/februarywinners2011.pdf


Mine's the second story.

Two confessions on "Supermoon Night"

a) I'm terrified of planets. I can't look when they show footage of planets on TV. Their monstrous size and their... "supernatural-ness" I guess, just creep me out. I could never be an astronaut.

b) If a full moon's light shifts to shine on me while I'm sleeping, I get crazy nightmares, hence why I keep my shutters closed at all times. I've been caught too many times. I'm definitely ruled by the moon.

What I'm doing right now in between school assignments

Most aspiring screenwriters simply don’t spend enough time choosing their concept. It’s by far the most common mistake I see in spec scripts. The writer has lost the race right from the gate. Months — sometimes years — are lost trying to elevate a film idea that by its nature probably had no hope of ever becoming a movie.

~Terry Rossio, WORDPLAY/Columns/01. A Foot in the Door

Wednesday Words

1) I'm crazy busy with school assignments, end of year thesis, exams and papers...my life is one big pile of never-ending homework.

2) I'm trying to find a concept. I'm working on a couple of stories but what I'm looking for, more than pretty sentences in a row, is a message, something that people will read and remember.
I'm trying to figure out & write "the truest sentence that I know". That's harder than it seems.

3) I'm trying to find time to meet the fellowship deadlines. With 2 months to go, I keep thinking that's more than enough time. Except when you factor in 1) and 2), it's not.

4) The results for the 1st competition I entered are in. I didn't win or place :(

I went to Granta Mag's Paris event today

& got my 17 euro (!) book signed by Dinaw Mengestu & Mark Gevisser (who spelled my name wrong, haha).
My 1st autographs ever :)

Art

Say it out loud, it's like spoken word.

Literary magazines

More so than winning competitions, my ultimate goal, obviously, is to be published.
Novels, screenplays, songs, editorials, articles, non-fiction...I want to write it all.

So far though, I haven't submitted to magazines. A lot of it has to do with them accepting only post submissions which costs money I don't have since I'm not in the US. Though that's mainly an excuse for me and my fear to hide behind.

I'm writing this now to make myself accountable: I'm working on a non-fiction contribution which I hope to finish and send by the end of next month at the latest. I've never written anything like that; it feels like submitting a diary entry in a way.

But now it's out there so I have to do it.
Who knows? I might even be selected :)