A mix of happy and sombre to start this update. While thrilled to have my first story accepted in Storymaker, it’s a story that is a bit darker than I would like.
I’ve worked for a few years now with the Lady Musgrave Trust, a charity in Brisbane that helps homeless women, and I compile the information for their Handy Guide.
It’s not just for people without a fixed address, there are a lot of people in society doing it tough, and this guide helps you find emergency food, shelter, and assistance.
With Covid-19 shutting everything down, it was inevitable that services helping the needy would be affected. When I read about food vans halting services it inspired me to step into the shoes of those suddenly not finding the helping hand they were expecting.
I’ve had some really positive comments on the story about life in the midst of service shut-downs for the people who need them the most. Read it here.
I can’t believe I forgot to include my greatest triumph of the first fortnight in my last newsletter … I debuted on Paragraph Planet!
Paragraph Planet is a creative writing website which publishes a 75-word micro story every day, and has done so since November 2008!
Your title has to be included in the 75 words, which makes writing extremely difficult. It’s a great opportunity to sharpen your editing skills, and they’re open to submissions. Why not give it a go yourself?
Once published for 24 hours, your story goes into the archives, but here’s a sneaky screenshot!
In other news, very happy to be accepted into the writers fold for Top 3: where writers on Medium promote other writer’s stories. A wonderful idea to help build a community of readers, but also a way to pay it forward. When you see great writing, it’s great to clap or highlight, but this gives writers a chance to share pieces they’ve been impressed or inspired by.
Enough of me waffling - here’s the friend links to this week’s writing by me!
Poetry
Plague (2 min read) - written in 1992 about the AIDS epidemic
Today. Thursday, 30 April 1992 (2 min read) - also from 1992, about the LA Riots
#FlashFiction*
A Wailing Tale (3 min read) (should really be listed under humour) (bad humour)
*because it’s not Flash Fiction without the hashtag apparently
Musings
Me. Some Homeless Guy. Versus Covid-19 (4 min read) in Storymaker
Did Self-Isolation Make You Forget the International Day of Happiness? (6 min read) in Invisible Illness
How to Silence the Voices of Depression in Your Head (7 min read) in Invisible Illness
Top Three Literal LOLs (4 min read - links to eight funny stories by other authors, plus one of my own) in Top 3
Don’t forget, you can find my work that isn’t published in other publications on Medium in these two personal publications, based on their story types:
Dip Your Toes - collates my #FlashFiction*
The Cultural Savage - musings, analysis, interviews
That’s it! See you next week!