purple pens and raging fires

One of the things I couldn't mention sooner is that I have been commissioned to write a piece for the upcoming Emerging Writers' Festival Reader, which will be launched in October. Needless to say, I've been rather excited about this, and began writing it almost as soon as I found out, even writing the second half during the week I could barely see anything within two metres.

I found it refreshing to write by hand too, although that wasn't a creative decision, but a decision to stay near the raging fire I'd built that night. The creative decision was to use a purple pen. While I don't want to say too much about the piece itself yet, I can tell you it is a personal essay: one of my first non-uni-assignment non-fiction pieces, which is exciting in itself.

Typing it up was a little strange. Great to engage with it again and to redraft as I went, but since my op, I seem to need a different magnification in specs for computer work than I do for reading, so neither pair seemed just right. (Please somebody, tell me I WILL get used to this.) I emailed it to a couple of writing friends for feedback on Friday and I plan to attack it again this week before sending it to the Reader's Editor, Dion Kagan, who also edited Vignette Press's The Death Mook.