Feb 17th

Monday/Tuesday I felt like the maddest person alive: my brain was in a state; I was wanting to end my relationship with Perlilly; my job seemed untenable; I felt like I couldn’t remember who I was before New Year, before I went to India – what I did, or what I consisted of. I felt like everything had gone wrong.
    We got down to talk.
    Underneath it all, there seemed to be something about me being annoyed at this noise she makes when chewing her lips. I expressed that, and one or two other things, and the next day I felt supremely happy – even in my work; that was a shock. Since then, it’s been more or less okay.
    I don’t trust my head at all. It tells me things, and they seem to be true, but when (or rather, if) I take a deeper look and try to get down to the root of it, it’s like there’s always something else there, and the original thing disappears. The feeling of wanting to quit, of wanting to change or run away is the leaves, the nests, the branches of this weed of a tree – I’m aiming to prune them, these things that I’ve grown in my mind, these things that I’ve built on top of the original discomfort, when they’re not where it’s at all. The roots, the foundations – seek them out, and that weed of a tree will crumble and fall, for it was never real in the first place.

I’ve got to write a story – I’ve got eight days and two and a half hours to come up with a decent short story of at least two thousand words. It’s for this publisher who’s offering the chance to win a genuine book deal; the publisher with whom I was published three years ago in their anthology, Bracket. They’ve chosen twenty-five writers out of the fifty-five they’ve published over the years and asked them to come up with one short story every month for the next ten months, and at the end of that time they’ve going to choose five people to offer deals to, to each publish a book of short stories. They reckon half the twenty-five will take up the challenge, and a few’ll drop out along the way – which means maybe ten will stay the distance, which is pretty good odds when you get down to it. I’d like to be one of the final ten. I’d like to be in with that fifty-fifty chance.
    That means I’ve got stories to write; it’s not been easy coming up with ideas. Of course, I’ve got lots in the pot from over the years – and maybe that’s where you come in. Click on the enclosed links to check them out and see what you think has the most potential for development (some are finished, some are works in progress). I’d be interested in all feedback!