This makes me happy: http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php?news_id=522

An image I submitted to Painted With Words provided the inspiration for four very short pieces of fiction (you can argue about whether it’s “Flash” or not in the comments). The photograph was taken in 2011 during a family excursion to the Canberra Glassworks.

The happiness extends not only from having one of my images published, but that four writers created new things out of their brains after seeing this picture (click on the above link to read the four very different stories).

Photography by Lily Mulholland

And the reason this brings so much happiness is that I totally bummed out in an ACT Writers’ Centre workshop a few years ago when we had a very arty farty short story writer thrust postcard images at us and tell us to ‘write, just write’. Well, I wrote crap (not to put too fine a point on things) and the experience was a little scarring 🙂

Oh, you wanted to know about how my writing’s going? Well, if you count non-fiction, it’s going great! I’ve written more than 50,000 words in the past six months. If you don’t count academic writing, then, not so good. But the good news is, my longtime-coming MPhil dissertation is five weeks away from being submitted. And then, OMG I am SO ready to start writing creative fiction again. Bring it!