There’s a story I have been writing and rewriting for years. It was a result of a kind of fracture in a longer project I was working on. I abandoned the project in favour of this little story, because it is more interesting, and I am (still) trying to get it right. I thought for a while it was done, but reading it again tonight I was wrong. It turns out I had the character, and the theme, and the references, but the story needs to lean into them so much more. The story, in point of fact, needs to become itself, and grow beyond my idea of what it should be. Thus, what I am going to do with this weird little fiction about a divinity living in a cottage, is pay attention to the ingredients I already put in. For example, it turns out me listing three author names on titles in my main character’s book shelf is crucial to understanding what kind of divinity my main character is, which has implications after all, and wasn’t just me showing off arcane stuff for fun. I did not realise this at the time. I was writing without knowing what I was doing, cooking up something believing there wasn’t a recipe, except I was holding the cookbook all along. Anyway, the thank yous rightfully go to previous me and to Paracelsus for providing answers to questions this author never thought to ask, until I was ready. Writing is a kind of alchemy after all, which is lucky really, because I am not a very good cook.

What else have I been doing? Getting published by the Adelaide Literary Magazine, is what, where two of my poems are now available to read.

The state of the writing: