quarantine

all day zine workshop with inky fingers crew to celebrate national flash fiction day. The collage art cover just about contains the ramblings of our feverish brains swimming in caffeine, quiche and creativity. Amazing what some folk can come up with on the spot, I struggled to be honest and my story is just raving mad.. but still had a good day, got to muck about with scissers/glue and I learnt a lot.

Underword that night has 33 flash fiction stories on, including me. First live performance ever and it is utterly frugging terrifying. As soon as I step on the bongo club stage the room shrinks to just it. I'm on a diving board and looking out at an impenetrable blackness. It's just me, a mike that bangs into my eye, a shaking sheet of paper, the spotlight and a dark mass in front of me. I had to keep one hand in my pocket to stop it from shaking. It's a lot harder than it looks. I can't make out a single face. It's exactly the dark jury I often conjure in my head. I take a breath and aired each word as if it was my last. After the longest 40 seconds ever I scramble off and am still shaking when my friend A goes up to do her first time an hour later.

Not sure if I am quite ready to drag my creations out from under my pillow and into the light yet. But glad I did it. I've come pretty far in just a few weeks - found my ruby slippers (when I resigned my job for uni), got some courage like the lion to get up and perform, all I need now is a brain and a heart and the Wizard of Oz yellow brick road to creative fulfilment is complete... and an extra kidney to handle the beer better.