You Only Live Once
Short.Sharp.Stories has just launched its seventh National competition.
Why short stories? As an editor and publisher I love working with ideas and development and concepts. I’m probably better suited to editing short stories than novels. It’s like having a quickie. No tedious foreplay to work through (what does that say about my sex life?!) when what you want is the action. No really, jokes aside. I love a punchy short story.
I haven’t always liked short stories. I was primarily a crime fiction reader in my earlier life, but we change, we grow. I sought out sagas and series so that I could live in the world of one particular author and his or her characters for as long as possible. The fiction world I immersed myself in became even more important than my reality and I’d be disappointed when I’d exhausted the options provided by that writer. This probably also speaks to my solitary nature as a child. Of course tastes change, and reading needs develop. I became more interested in experimental writing, poetry and avant-garde fiction, and that included shorter pieces and short stories.
What did not change was my love of reading, and even closer to the bone, the constant desire for story. We, as writers, are all the time making sense of our lives – an extended story from birth till death. Whatever we write, our reality will in some way be reflected in our work. Our lives are the material we seek. As readers, we seek to be validated, surprised, entertained, but we also seek resonance. Reading offers the space to empathise, to be thrilled, to be moved, and to share in another’s story.
In our new competition, Short.Sharp.Stories is hoping that writers will have fun with the theme YOLO. Even as the phrase has become less mainstream in the lexicon, the philosophy is enduring. Seize the day! You only live once! It needn’t imply recklessness, but it is an invitation to focus on the now and to appreciate what we have in this day and to appreciate and utilize our opportunities.
I’m thrilled to have Karina Szczurek working with me again on this venture. Her sharp eye for talent, her clarity of thought and her incisive editing are assets to any project.
As for our local writing talent – it continues to astound and thrill: the writing, the stories, our sheer diversity, means that we are able to share truly original tales; and united by our bond of living and working in South Africa, the stories are uniquely South African.
Please see our previous titles at TATTOO PRESS.
BLOODY SATISFIED, ADULTS ONLY, INCREDIBLE JOURNEY, DIE LAUGHING, TRADE SECRETS and FLUID. (INSTANT EXPOSURE was published as an online title.)
