A Memoir and The Understatement

I discovered Flash Fiction Magazine through Twitter, when I began writing Twitter Fiction after Shiva Acharya, one of close friends and literary advisers (no, really!), exhorted me to be more regular on the microblogging site and try my hand at 140-character fiction. He thought I'd be wonderful with it, and as always, he was right.

A Memoir: This was first published in print in eFiction India in February 2014. Flash Fiction Magazine accepted it for publication in April 2014. The site had just been launched and at the time they had space to accept most of the works received, except if the work was really shabby. Now they have a waiting period and backlog, which means they are establishing themselves well already. Go, FFM! This story was also published later in Every Writer's Resource, in December 2014, accompanied by an artwork by Tommy Inberg. So far, this has been my most successful flash.

A Memoir was written in February 2014, inspired by a snatch of description of old furniture in Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who Tailed a Thief. Being a bibliophile, it is very easy for me to connect to books and regard them as living entities than as a dead tree that has been scrawled over with literary inanities. For how I empathise with a book, read the story.

The Understatement: This was written in October 2014 and published in the same month in FFM. I was trying to attain closure with this piece, and the related eBook My Heart is Your Brothel that I brought out through the free-to-use Papyrus Editor. I was infatuated by a younger colleague just like the protagonist in The Understatement, and it was important that I let the emotions out of my system in order to retain sanity in my behaviour with him as well as with others in his presence. Writing this flash and the set of micropoems (which were first distributed on Twitter before they were compiled into an eBook) helped me do just that - as well as helping me attain closure on the subject.

The story is not one of my best, but I've got some interest generated around it. My readers have seen it in two ways - some think the protagonist was married and that was the punch of the story, while others said they think the protagonist was making up the husband part in order to extricate herself from the situation. You read the story and decide what you want to think - maybe give me a few other viewpoints?

This compilation of my published works is also listed on Facebook in an album format. 

The Wait, The Body Takes Over, and Everyone's Poems

All three poems listed in this post appeared on Coffee Shop Poems, a repository of poems curated by Tim Knight (@coffeeshoppoems on Twitter).

The Wait, published in March 2014, on was among the poems written years ago. It first appeared on this blog on January 28, 2008, but again it is likely to have been written earlier than that. I do remember what I was feeling when I wrote this, though. It was one of those depressing days, where nothing interesting seemed to be happening to me. I was trying to capture in the words of this poem the feeling of loneliness that accompanies a wait for something or someone.

The Body Takes Over was published in April 2014. This is one of the poems that shamelessly celebrate the sexuality of women. I wrote three-four on this theme in late 2009, when I was going through a phase of being in and out of relationships. Rather than succumbing to feeling "like a slut", I decided to make myself feel privileged as the one who was not afraid of her sexuality and its consequences. This poem first appeared on this blog on November 29, 2009.

Everyone's Poems went up on the site in September 2014. Written in 2011 and first posted here on February 10, 2011, this bunch of micropoems is about little things that anyone can relate to. If I remember right, this was written in my early insomniac phase, when I used to sit after work into the wee hours, staring at the dark sky and hoping for more of the moon. The original entry had one additional poem than the numbers featured on Coffee Shop Poems, and I took it out before submitting because it did not seem quite relevant now.

This compilation of my published works is also listed on Facebook in an album format. 

Journey of a Poem - a poet's ramblings

So I’m finally taking time out to collate my published works. My foray into getting my works published began with eFiction India in February 2013. For more than six months, I sent my works only to eFiction India. In 2014, I vowed to try out other avenues, and so far, I’ve had some success in getting published. While the journey has been tough – you cannot imagine the ratio of rejections to acceptance – it has been highly rewarding and pleasant. Thanks to Sheikha A. for helping me figure out the submission process.

In this and the posts that follow, I shall write a two-bit about a published work with a link to the online display of the work, and any backstory to the piece or its publication, if worth mentioning.

Journey of a Poem (efiction India, Print – March 2013; online  – November 2013)

I don't even remember when this was first written. It was first posted on this blog on 19 November, 2009, so we must all assume it was written in that month, though maybe not on that day. Or maybe it was. I'm not in the habit of noting the date a piece is completed, so it's a little difficult for even myself to check my own progress in writing and narrative/thematic styles. But I more or less do remember the chronological order in which the works were written, and that is a little help.

I've noticed that many of my poems are about poetry or about the act of writing. While many literary journals do not like this theme, I'm reminded of Gulzar's words - spoken in a seminar in Mangaluru three years ago - that many poets write about poetry because that is closest to their heart.

And while you are here, go check out the eFiction India website. They do not have much content online, but purchasing the magazine or subscribing to it is worth the moolah. Huge amounts of upcoming talent! 

This compilation of my published works is also listed on Facebook in an album format.