Being Featured

a gentle confidence boost

Last night I got a bit of a boost with my writing. MJ Polk aka Stories From The Jukebox pick my short story, especially the first paragraph, for the feature from last week’s pieces sent in.

Week #35 Feature https://storiesfromthejukebox.substack.com/i/195629827/week-35-feature

I’ve been drawn to writing about change for a while now and have not been sure I’ve been getting in. Lots of drafts and redrafts on other work. With Stories From the Jukebox there is only a week to do so not much time and generally I bang something out and have to submit it there and then because my week has been busy.

Then I get something like this

In it she shows us the true cost, of the many wars fought behind closed doors in households all over the world every single day.

I am a firm believer that fiction can bring about change, and this is a great example.

Marley pulled herself and Squeaky Ted further under her bed, curling round the detritus of bed-fluff, as words like gunfire rose from the kitchen, the loaded weapons of years of marriage that her parents hurled back and forth with accuracy at each other. She knew the heavier ones were her dad’s but her mum, after so much practice, knew how to hit those places nobody else knew of. Between them they left a graveyard on the highway of Marley’s heart that neither would ever know about.

I’ve had a few rejection emails this week and from another local writing group a “this isn’t poetry because it has no similes or metaphors” as the critique.

I know creative writing is subjective and I teach that in my groups. I’m someone who “doesn’t get” The Classics. I used to get my daughter to read them for then give me a synopsis. And there are books I love that she just doesn’t get. So yes creative writing is subjective. But when it happens to me - the rejection bit - I do forget that and do the “oh no I’ll never write again” along with lots of other reasons why not. One of them being “I’m not changing the world by writing” and then list loads of things I “ought” to be doing that I would really not enjoy. And then I get something like this -

I am a firm believer that fiction can bring about change, and this is a great example.

Thank you MJ. I am going to hold this close, maybe even turn it into a screensaver [a wonderful bit of procrastination :) ]

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Wild flower meadow on the edge of a social housing estate in the North of England