Oct 162014
 


Picture by Joanne Hoggart
Artist: Joanne Hoggart

Flash fiction’ competition

I will have a go at this. Big prize money. Might be lower odds than the poetry competitions. Not that there’s much difference, anyway, between a piece of short fiction and a prose poem ( – is there?).

They’ve set a limit of five hundred words. Tell a whole story within that constraint.

I want to achieve what Tracey Emin has achieved in her latest exhibition of herself in all her nakedness.

Dougal and his ageing curmudgeonly fellow-artists love to slag her off as being unable to draw. She herself proclaims that she can’t draw, but I think these blunt, raw gouache paint-drawings – and the sculptures – are primitively, sophisticatedly, elegantly, vulgarly, confidently amazing.

Her true purpose is to communicate passion, says her Guardian reviewer (albeit a tad sycophantically). Her works share epiphanies of love and loneliness…

Hey – that’s me! What I write about! Me! My life…

The point is, it’s everybody’s life, isn’t it.

Tell me.
Tell me it’s not your life.

For the competition I will retell my story – everybody‘s story – of love, of loneliness. Make them laugh and cry. Reach a dramatic crescendo. Then a grand finale.

Above all, win some dosh.

 

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  13 responses to “Page 23”

  1. Good luck, but there will be many in the queue for that flash fiction prize.

    • Thank you Bruce. I know. Poetry/fiction competitions can get literally thousands of entries.

      What about the epiphanies of love and loneliness though, Bruce? Anybody? Has anyone read Georges Monbiot’s article (in The Guardian newspaper, UK) about how lonely we have become, as a nation?

  2. – Two loyal crows
    – One rat eating apples on the tree
    – A picture of ‘Self-portrait, cat in a barrel’ at Chateau la Coste

    • Thank you Solitary Person for this reference to three of Tracey’s works. We have been able to add a link for ‘cat in a barrel’ but can’t find links for the other works.

  3. I question Suki, since I am surprised. Emin is masterly at portrayal of self. And her drawings are fab when she does them.

    But she has a certain exposure to the world due to celebrity. Is this what Suki aspires to?

    • The aspiration I share with Tracey, if any, is to ‘communicate passion [and] share epiphanies of love and loneliness’.

      Obviously I despise the current most widespread aspiration in UK culture that is purely the achievement of celebrity: fame for fame’s sake (or rather, for fortune’s sake).

      As a creative person my simple motive is to have my work read.

      Note I have not said ‘to have my work bought’. I’ve totally given up on that one. You are reading this for free. Ask me in admiring terms for any of my in-print books and I’m likely to gratefully thrust one at you for free.

      You’re welcome to read more of my work for free here.

      PS To support me financially, please remember to start your Amazon shopping by clicking on the Amazon icon on any page of my sukithelifemodel site (top right corner). I will then get a tiny % of whatever you purchase. THANK YOU!

  4. I find your tone just a little bit sour, Suki.
    Don’t be.
    It’s off-putting.

  5. Dear Sue (and Suki),
    so was mine (!).

    ‘Two loyal crows’ and ‘One rat eating apples on the tree’ were works by Docket, I think.

    • Docket?
      Suki wants me to put links on to works mentioned on her sites, but I can’t find an artist called Docket – perhaps because we currently have limited internet access (no Google). Suki of course blames me.

  6. Nine hilarious blog pages slammin’ Tracey’s ‘art’. Sheer bliss! Ta for the link Suki. It’s my kinda readin’. Finger-lickin’ good.

    Her work has failed miserably – where yours has well and truly succeeded – in “communicating passion and sharing epiphanies of love and loneliness”.

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