Wednesday 25 January 2012

Collaboration with a Cat & Other Stories




I’m back!
And I've got a good feeling about 2012.
My year began with the news that my short story ‘Five Pounds Short’ is to be published in the Earlyworks Press anthology. It’s about the domino effect that occurs when a woman loses a fiver.
Ironically, I shaved a thousand words off it so I wouldn't have to pay an extra fiver for submitting such a long piece.
I’ve also just spent two weeks in Barcelona working on my novel.
It’s had a few false starts and I’ve thrown away at least two novels worth of words but finally my first draft is done.
I stayed in my brother’s flat while I was away since he was on holiday and looked after his little cat.
It was the first time I’d ever looked after a cat. In my mind I fully expected it to be as easy as looking after a house plant.
The cat, called Kitty, (pronounced Kiddy due to my brother’s fiancée being American), insisted on collaborating with my novel. As soon as I began to write she’d walk nonchalantly over my keyboard.
You'll be able to differentiate our writing styles quite easily.
Her sentences read something like this: jrierhvkw;lmnvfjfjdfdm
Occasionally mine aren’t much better.
Apart from her eagerness to play at 4am, our time together was enjoyable and productive.
I wrote more in two weeks than I would normally write in two months.
Now I’m faced with the fresh challenge of editing the whole book and I expect it will take a few months
But I've lots of short stories up my sleeves and on my hard drive. I’m thinking it’s time they got together in a short and sweet compilation, a perfect little read before bedtime.
Be it the end of the world or not, I'm going to make 2012 a year of action.

4 comments:

Face-T said...

Nice to see you're back with a boom! - Happy New Year!

Shop Girl said...

Thanks - happy new year to you too! And thanks for coming back to my blog - the little break did me good!

Felicity Hayes-McCoy said...

Good to see you're blogging again. And congratulations on the progress with the novel. I started work myself today with fingers tightly crossed for 2012. Then I found it produces sentences very much like Kitty's ... maybe we could invent a new genre ...

Brian said...

Hi Emily,

I like your site (and cat), you have some interesting posts. My site My Perfect Pitch compliments yours, consisting of interesting articles from a published author, and a free writers yearbook with over 1000 book publishers currently accepting submissions. Keep up the good work.

Regards, Brian