where do they go?

Early last month I had one of those Midas weeks where everything I touched turned to gold. I wrote about it here, and now I'm ready to tell more.

In my two non-kid school-hour days and just one extra evening, I wrote a heap of new stuff and edited a piece I'd been commissioned to write and had submitted a week or two before.

The piece I did the edit on is called 'The Red Haze' and is a personal essay about balancing writing and parenting, although I tried to make it familar to anyone with commitments that get in the way of their writing. Also, it's really more about process, with a sneak of where (some of) my ideas come from. It will be in the EWF Reader, which will be launched next month (details not yet confirmed). It's going to be one fabulous production.

The shorter, non-fiction piece I wrote appeared in the September issue of the VWC newsletter, Victorian Writer. It's part of the regional round-up and considers how last summer's bushfires affected local writers. Well, their writing, really.

The poem I wrote that was accepted on the same day, will appear in the Northern Stories Anthology, produced by Clouds of Magellan, along with another poem that had been submitted earlier. The launch for the anthology is on Saturday November 21, at the Northcote Town Hall, from 1pm.

That leaves just the short story I wrote. The 'theme' was to write a story that would make the reader feel physically uncomfortable, enough so they'd shift in their seat, cringe, whatever. The brief news item that inspired the piece was a five second report of the Hot Chocolate Rapist having had his day in court. I can't even remember the outcome, but I had an idea straight away. I wrote the story in third person from the perspective of a twenty-somethng male, and I'll leave it to you to get a copy of Torpedo 7 in (late) November to find out more.

With everything I wrote that week being accepted for publication, I'm thinking I should plan a few weeks like that every year. I wonder if one per month is too much to ask?

As an aside though, amongst all this I also had a story accepted for fourW, which is produced by the Booranga Writers' Centre who, for their twentieth issue are launching in Wagga, Sydney and Melbourne. The Melbourne launch is at La Mama Courthouse, Sunday 22nd November, from 2.30pm. Come along and support them, so they'll have to launch in Melbourne every year.

Now that all bar one of my stories have been picked up, I've been feeling a little pressured to write some more. This morning, I picked out one that I couldn't quite get right last time I looked at it in January, and I fiddled with it, fiddled some more and have sent it off too.

Now though, I'm off to write a poem. Challenged myself to write a poem a day for a week (starting today), to see if it'll motivate me for something I'll tell you about shortly.