Category Archives: Short Stories

To celebrate the release of Jessica Bell’s latest novel, WHITE LADY, she is giving away an e-copy (mobi, ePub, or PDF) to the first person to correctly guess the one true statement in the three statements below. To clarify, two statements are lies, and one is true:

Jessica Bell’s current comfort food is …

1. beetroot salad with a yoghurt dressing
2. plain pasta mixed with fresh chopped tomato, basil and olive oil
3. feta cheese and tomato on toast

 What do you think? Which one is true? Write your guess in the comments, along with your email address. Comments will close in 48 hours. If no-one guesses correctly within in 48 hours, comments will stay open until someone does.

 Want more chances to win? You have until October 31 to visit all the blogs where Jessica will share a different set of true and false statements on each one. Remember, each blog is open to comments for 48 hours only from the time of posting.

 If you win, you will be notified by email with instructions on how to download the book.

 Click HERE to see the list of blogs.

 ABOUT THE BOOK:

*This novel contains coarse language, violence, and sexual themes.

 ​Sonia yearns for sharp objects and blood. But now that she’s rehabilitating herself as a “normal” mother and mathematics teacher, it’s time to stop dreaming about slicing people’s throats.

 While being the wife of Melbourne’s leading drug lord and simultaneously dating his best mate is not ideal, she’s determined to make it work.

 It does work. Until Mia, her lover’s daughter, starts exchanging saliva with her son, Mick. They plan to commit a crime behind Sonia’s back. It isn’t long before she finds out and gets involved to protect them.

 But is protecting the kids really Sonia’s motive?

 Click HERE to view the book trailer.

Click HERE for purchase links.

Jessica Bell, a thirty-something Australian-native contemporary fiction author, poet and singer/songwriter/guitarist, is the Publishing Editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal and the director of the Homeric Writers’ Retreat & Workshop on the Greek island of Ithaca. She makes a living as a writer/editor for English Language Teaching Publishers worldwide, such as Pearson Education, HarperCollins, MacMillan Education, Education First and Cengage Learning.

Connect with Jessica online:

Website | Retreat & workshop | Blog | Vine Leaves Literary Journal | Facebook | Twitter

A Sneak Peak Behind The Scenes

I have been tagged by Kathryn Apel @KatApel to talk about my current work in progress (WIP).

The challenge is to share 7 lines from page 7 or 77 of a current WIP.

You can read her snippet here.

My current WIP is a verse novel, The Broken Chord. As it’s a verse novel, it hasn’t reached seventy-seven pages in length yet (almost there – about 65% towards expected target of 20K). So, page 7 it is.

Here’s the blurb:

At the beginning of Caitlyn-Rose’s final year of high school she begins to question her relationship with her father, her music, her boyfriend Jack, and what she wants to do when she leaves school. Behind it all, the loss of her mother six years earlier lingers in the echoes of her heart.

I went a bit beyond the seven lines suggested, to give you a sense of the character and story. And it’s only a rough first draft, so go easy.

Going Home

Other days it’s just me, a cup of tea and my homework
In the quietness of the house; I usually work without music playing
While the shadows lengthen and shroud the page I’m working on
Forcing me to turn on the light

When it’s just me, the quietness is an emptiness
Jack is a quiet individual but he fills the space
With warmth and heart and muttered curses
When he loses a game

The quietness sits awkwardly on my shoulders
Never settling, like a jacket that’s too tight
The darker the room becomes, the tighter the fit
And not even the blaring of the stereo will shift it

Where I live, bin night is Thursday night. So before I go to bed I empty all the bins in the house and put them into the big bin, wheel it to the footpath and leave it there for the garbage men to collect early on Friday morning.

Every second week is recycling week so it’s two bins on that night. I always check the street to see what bins are out for pick up. 

Which is a round about way of getting to the topic of today’s post – throwing out works in progress. 

I posted this question on twitter last week: 

I have note books of idea, half-finished thoughts and on my computer is a collection of folders containing stories and poems in states of degradation. Some of them are from very early on in my writing journey, others are more recent. But when do you decide to let an idea fester and rot, or attach electrodes to its sensitive parts and flick the switch?

I have a poem that began as an extended Post It Note piece a couple of years ago:

From there I expanded it into a longer piece but it wasn’t working. I had sent it to my crit group and another trusted poet for feedback, and they agreed there was something worthwhile in it but it needed work. I looked at it again and reworked it a few times but was still unsatisfied that it was achieving what I wanted it to do. Therefore, last week I questioned whether it should be filed and dumped or continue working on it. 

I then picked up my copy of Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled and read a few of the opening pages and it gave me a new way to look at the poem, leading to this declaration on twitter (you will need to read from the bottom up for chronology):

It lead me to ditching the first stanza and completely reworking the poem with a definite metre (although not always strictly applied). The poem has been reviewed by a member of my crit group and while it still needs work, it is a poem I feel has potential.

And I’d thought I’d share the stanza I was throwing out.

In primary school I read the story of Sadako.
A single aeroplane dropped a single bomb
Igniting the century whose flash echoes
Birthing a million universes
While destroying one.
She wished for one thousand paper cranes
to change one world: her world
With symbolic angular, creased lines crafted
a montage of hope and hopelessness
into a winged inanimate prayer

In the coming weeks, I’ll have more pieces for Throw Out Thursday, some poems, some extracts from other works in progress.

When an idea or half finished, or even completely completed piece is done and dusted, I am yet to work out. I know I will leave some ideas and half finished works to rot; others I may return to. It is part of the maturation of a writer to winnow all the ideas you have and sow the good ones. But even the good ideas may not produce a good harvest. That’s the beauty of being a word farmer. 

How do you decide whether an idea has past its Use By Date?

In my post, Why Are Creative People Afraid of Failure, I asked the question “Why?”

No one wants to fail; no one wants to feel like a failure. I argued we need to redefine failure; to see it as an opportunity, as a teaching and learning tool.

It made me think of what stops a creative person, the underlying fear, and it reminded me of a post I wrote almost 2 years ago and it is pertinent to follow on from last week’s post.

I’ve added it here with some amendments.

Something has crept into my thinking.

It’s like a bad song you hear on the radio and it burrows into your ear (anything cheesy will do: something from “The Sound of Music” or The Wiggles – yep, you’re humming something already). You start humming it in the shower, while you’re driving, and it somehow becomes the theme song during the most intimate moments with your partner.

And it’s starting to worry me. Something has happened and it’s affecting my writing.

I haven’t added to my novella in weeks. It gathers digital dust as it waits patiently for me to return. I have short stories waiting for me to send out, but I hesitate to click the “Submit” button.

Why?

What is this thing that haunts my writing?

Fear.

Fear affects almost every creative person and almost every creative endeavour at some point. Whether you’re starting out or been creating for a long time. 

Fear is crippling and debilitating. It can cause a work in progress to stall, languishing in digital purgatory while it waits for you to get back to it.

Fear makes you question your ability and belief in your writing. You end up asking, “Why am I doing this? My work sucks greater than a vacuum cleaner.”

Fear makes you create excuses for not writing, to find some other activity to fill your time. Suddenly your socks and underwear drawer is tidied, labelled, alphabetised and colour-coded.

Fear distracts you with all manner of shiny things on the internet. 

Fear short changes your dreams. It gives you a Happy Meal (without the toy) when you asked for steak with the side order of chips and salad, and a strawberry milkshake.

Fear undermines the core of any creative endeavour.

Fear steals your creative flow.

What can you do about it?

Identify the fear.

Is it a fear of failure? A fear of being embarrassed or ridiculed because you’ve decided to write or paint or dance or make films?

Listen to the fear.

Hear what it has to say. Are the points justified?

Weigh up carefully what it says. Act upon good advice if it is warranted.

Then upside its head and give it a wedgie.

A creative life lived in fear is a travesty and accomplishes nothing.

Someone will say, “I want to be creative but I am afraid to start.”

Do not be afraid.

Defeat your fear through trust in yourself.

Trust in yourself – self belief is crucial. Do not doubt. He who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind (James 1:6). You create because it’s a compulsion, a drive, a passion.

Trust your planning – Know when you intend to create (write, painting, draw, sculpt, rehearse). Protect the time, and get it done. Writers: this also applies to your outlining: if you know where you are going, you have already joined the dots. All you’re then doing is colouring in between the line to make a pretty picture (you can, of course, colour outside the lines too).

Trust in the work – There is a difference in knowing if a piece of work is below par and letting the fear subvert a good work. If the work is good enough (drafted, edited, beta read, rewritten etc), trust in its ability to reach and engage an audience.

Final Thoughts

Fear manifests itself to each creative person in different ways. Some doubt, others procrastinate, some quit.

Turn the fear into a motivating factor. Let it become a driving force.

I have faced the fear. I am moving forward.

Turn your fear into excitement. It’s the same chemical in the brain; different interpretation.

Don’t let the fear defeat you.

When was the last time you faced up and confronted your fears, and won?

Dictionary: the feeling of air passing over privates when it falls out of pyjamas in the morning

Thus begins Degenerate Dictionary.

What is the Degenerate Dictionary?

It all stems from a family game Jessica Bell remembers as a child when her mother and friend played with words.

ARSENIC: A cut on the bum.
PROPAGANDA: Having a good look.

Last year Jessica began posting these idiosyncratic definitions on twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #Jessicasdictionary.

I decided to join in and contribute my own:

PANTOMIME – the dance performed when putting on underwear in a public change room.

The exchange went back and forth over a few days until a surprise message arrived in my Inbox.

The gist of it was this: Would you like to write a dictionary with me?

Me: *brief pause* Oh yeah!

And so, what was once #Jessicasdictionary has become Degenerate Dictionary.

It appeals to our warped sense of humour and our love of playing with words and meaning, degenerating words into something different.

Now the little project that could is now even bigger and better than ever.

Here’s how the Degenerate Dictionary process plays out:

• Every day, we post a new degenerate word or two to this blog.
• The same will be posted to twitter via @DegDic.
• If you want to see one of your own whacky definitions in our book, with your name fully credited, tweet it to @DegDic. If we love your definition enough to include it, we’ll let you know. (Keep in mind, it could be months before you hear from us.)
• You can “Like” our Facebook page

We hope to see you join in the fun!