(#16) New fiction: The Estuary
A new short story for my Joy Rise supporters + a creativity prompt
Dear readers,
In this issue, I’m sharing a new, thousand-word short story that means a great deal to me, and a bonus creativity prompt offering kindling for your curiosity and sparks.
But first, UK friends and readers:
Tickets for The Brontë Women’s Writing Festival - I’m doing an event with Tracy Chevalier (!!!) - go on sale TOMORROW! Friday 13 June.
You’re invited to join us for an evening with Tracy Chevalier (Girl with the Pearl Earring) and Holly Ringland (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart).
Host Yvette Huddleston will be in conversation with the two authors discussing their novels and how they’ve both been inspired by the Brontës' writing.
Tickets include a glass of fizz on arrival.
There is so much that is always asking for our attention - thanks for sharing your time with my writing.
Did you know?
While this issue is for paying supporters of my writing, every month I also write for all of my subscribers. You can find all of my free-to-read issues of The Joy Rise here.
An image can mean something different to everyone who views it.
In 2012, this idea fascinated Australian photographer Cam Cope. Coupled with the old adage ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’, he put a call out for submissions from writers to each write a one thousand word creative response to one of his photographs.
What resulted was Cam’s 2013 extraordinary exhibition, Picture 1000 Words, held in Naarm/Melbourne, which created a powerful showcase of the way words can work with images to create a rare insight into creative perception and meaning.
When I found out that my creative response piece - a short story, The Estuary - had been one of those selected by Cam for his exhibition, I was beside myself. It was one of my early fiction wins as a writer.
The way that I remember the submission process worked was that writers were invited to view a select portfolio of Cam’s photographs online, without knowing the real world origins of any of them. This is one of the elements that interested me the most about the project: we were invited to respond in writing by instinct and feeling to the photograph that resonated with us the most.
The first time I saw the photograph that I wrote in response to, I felt an instant connection to it. I came to refer to it as its filename, 29. What I vividly recall is that the more I looked at it, the more 29 came to mean to me. I flicked back and forth between the other photographs in Cam’s portfolio but every time I came back to 29, I had a deep and visceral response.
While the story didn’t come to me straight away, I immediately knew that I didn’t want to write a literal translation of the photograph. I turned ideas over and over in my mind for a few days, returning to 29 over and again, on my phone in idle moments on my commute, and at night, before sleep. Then I woke up one morning and the story was there waiting for me with my coffee. I wrote a messy, shitty, beautiful-bones kind of first draft in one sitting.
Twelve years later, on reflection, I’m struck by what a unique project like Picture 1000 Words achieved – using stories, written or visual, to bring people together in a symbiosis of perceptions, where every interpretation is as true as the next, creating a space where everyone’s story can exist, and is valid. I am still so honoured to have been a part of it. One of the things that I love about publishing The Joy Rise is the place that it creates for me to share my fiction with readers here that can’t be read anywhere else, as is the case with The Estuary.
Final note: at the exhibition, to satisfy curiosity, Cam provided a synopsis for each of his thirteen photographs to go alongside their written responses. I’ve included some of those details behind Cam’s photograph that inspired by my story, The Estuary, below.