Flash Fiction
In May 2019, I started writing flash fiction - mostly pieces between 250 and 500 words.
Flash Stash
2019
In June, Guest Rules was shortlisted by Writers HQ in their quarterly flash competition.
In October, Believe was shortlisted for the 2019 Bridport Flash competition.
Also in October, Beige was published online by Reflex Fiction.
There's a recorded version of Beige you can watch or listen to, read by then-92 year old Barbara, and illustrated with photos.
2020
In January, Tinkle Bell was longlisted for the Flash 500 Fourth Quarter 2019.
In October, The Things Your Mother Warned You About, Number 431: Writing All Day In Coffee Shops
was shortlisted for the 2020 Bridport Flash competition. Here it is - written in February 2020, it's now a sort of inadvertent homage to life pre-Covid and lockdown life:
The Things Your Mother Warned You About, Number 431: Writing All Day in Coffee Shops
There's a moment when you're looking through some saved documents and you find half a piece you apparently wrote in November which is quite good but you don't remember writing it so you've no idea who these people are or how it's going to end and you're beginning to suspect your left hand's writing while you're asleep which might explain why you're dreaming about transparent wafty people hovering outside until desirable houses come up for sale and Jason Statham fixing your boiler but where that's not a euphemism and an iPad screen made out of towels and how you suddenly believe that the Scottish word for a duster is a 'dither' and writing the first page of your fourth novel and it's brilliant but then in the morning you can't remember a single bloody word of it and another dream when a bus goes past and the advert on the side is your password and that erotic one where you're a Selkie which is loads better than the dream about your friend Helen hard-boiling eggs and the one about the suffragette accused of fingering books in the library and that black and white creature sitting on a dining chair a couple of nights ago that wasn't a cat or a badger and you want to say 'guillemot' just because that's a good word but it wasn't one of those either and you think what you really need is another cup of coffee and then you remember -
2021
This is the year when I only enter one flash competition, and ... nothing! (I know!) Here's the piece I entered, below.
I wrote it having read a blog some time ago by a female writer. What stood out for me, and perhaps more importantly the feeling that I carried about it for some time following, was how annoyed she seemed to be about older women 'with scarves' attending writing workshops. I understood it to really be a complaint about one section of the population having the money and the time to do so.
But, of course, when these women were younger - perhaps this writer's age - chances are they didn't have either the money or the time, either. Maybe only now were they able to take part. I've met a lot of women who, in later stages of their lives, have been trying to find - or re-find - through creativity, their own identity, away from their (often entrenched) family and work roles. I've also come across many older women who have carried, sometimes since schooldays, the dismissal of their writing interests or other artistic and creative skills, and who only in their later years have felt able to 'put their heads above the parapet' and try again. Why be so disdainful about other women pursuing something creative that matters to them, at whatever age? And, in only a comparatively few years, I felt too, this annoyed writer would be old enough to join their ranks. Why be so bitter towards your potential future self? Especially when there's so much good published research showing it's our own ageist views that helps ensure our own older years are full of illness. 'The Sisterhood of The Scarves' was my response.
The Sisterhood of The Scarves
Our sign to meet is Emma tying her red scarf to the clothes rail nearest to the door at the Oxfam shop. Once inside Faye’s garage, we open the bag and solemnly take out a scarf each. I’m not a fan of scarves. This is an act of solidarity, not fashion.
Julia wanted to call us ‘The Noras’ because of that Nora Ephron neck book, but Wendy said we’d sound like the nit nurse. We toyed with ‘Scarf-face’. We settled on The Sisterhood. The scarves mark us out as the enemy: older women. We don’t all have money or families or good health but that makes no odds, it seems.
This is life as a hag lit novel. Act 1: ridicule wrinkled necks, sneer at those with scarves.
Act 2: admit defeat, start wearing scarves. Use the offcasts to join the outcasts.
We’ve draped diaphanous scarves across male statues’ genitalia. We’ve made long skipping ropes from the heftier scarves and played Double Dutch on pavements during school runs. We staged a mock execution of anti-ageing creams - using scarves as nooses - in front of beauty salons, until the police were called. Then we positioned scarves across the unmanned police station car park - spelling out ‘ageist arseholes’ - and used a drone to take photos. That took ages. It got us labelled ‘HRT hooligans.’
We’re past the midpoint. We donate our scarves to Oxfam. Act 3: lift the veil; stick your neck out.
Faye unexpectedly cracks her knuckles. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Ready?’
© Lorna Easterbrook 2016-2022 All Rights Reserved
Top image: Front cover for 'Book of Nonsense' made by Lorna: leather and fabric on leather (with apologies to vegan readers)
In May 2019, I started writing flash fiction - mostly pieces between 250 and 500 words.
Flash Stash
2019
In June, Guest Rules was shortlisted by Writers HQ in their quarterly flash competition.
In October, Believe was shortlisted for the 2019 Bridport Flash competition.
Also in October, Beige was published online by Reflex Fiction.
There's a recorded version of Beige you can watch or listen to, read by then-92 year old Barbara, and illustrated with photos.
2020
In January, Tinkle Bell was longlisted for the Flash 500 Fourth Quarter 2019.
In October, The Things Your Mother Warned You About, Number 431: Writing All Day In Coffee Shops
was shortlisted for the 2020 Bridport Flash competition. Here it is - written in February 2020, it's now a sort of inadvertent homage to life pre-Covid and lockdown life:
The Things Your Mother Warned You About, Number 431: Writing All Day in Coffee Shops
There's a moment when you're looking through some saved documents and you find half a piece you apparently wrote in November which is quite good but you don't remember writing it so you've no idea who these people are or how it's going to end and you're beginning to suspect your left hand's writing while you're asleep which might explain why you're dreaming about transparent wafty people hovering outside until desirable houses come up for sale and Jason Statham fixing your boiler but where that's not a euphemism and an iPad screen made out of towels and how you suddenly believe that the Scottish word for a duster is a 'dither' and writing the first page of your fourth novel and it's brilliant but then in the morning you can't remember a single bloody word of it and another dream when a bus goes past and the advert on the side is your password and that erotic one where you're a Selkie which is loads better than the dream about your friend Helen hard-boiling eggs and the one about the suffragette accused of fingering books in the library and that black and white creature sitting on a dining chair a couple of nights ago that wasn't a cat or a badger and you want to say 'guillemot' just because that's a good word but it wasn't one of those either and you think what you really need is another cup of coffee and then you remember -
2021
This is the year when I only enter one flash competition, and ... nothing! (I know!) Here's the piece I entered, below.
I wrote it having read a blog some time ago by a female writer. What stood out for me, and perhaps more importantly the feeling that I carried about it for some time following, was how annoyed she seemed to be about older women 'with scarves' attending writing workshops. I understood it to really be a complaint about one section of the population having the money and the time to do so.
But, of course, when these women were younger - perhaps this writer's age - chances are they didn't have either the money or the time, either. Maybe only now were they able to take part. I've met a lot of women who, in later stages of their lives, have been trying to find - or re-find - through creativity, their own identity, away from their (often entrenched) family and work roles. I've also come across many older women who have carried, sometimes since schooldays, the dismissal of their writing interests or other artistic and creative skills, and who only in their later years have felt able to 'put their heads above the parapet' and try again. Why be so disdainful about other women pursuing something creative that matters to them, at whatever age? And, in only a comparatively few years, I felt too, this annoyed writer would be old enough to join their ranks. Why be so bitter towards your potential future self? Especially when there's so much good published research showing it's our own ageist views that helps ensure our own older years are full of illness. 'The Sisterhood of The Scarves' was my response.
The Sisterhood of The Scarves
Our sign to meet is Emma tying her red scarf to the clothes rail nearest to the door at the Oxfam shop. Once inside Faye’s garage, we open the bag and solemnly take out a scarf each. I’m not a fan of scarves. This is an act of solidarity, not fashion.
Julia wanted to call us ‘The Noras’ because of that Nora Ephron neck book, but Wendy said we’d sound like the nit nurse. We toyed with ‘Scarf-face’. We settled on The Sisterhood. The scarves mark us out as the enemy: older women. We don’t all have money or families or good health but that makes no odds, it seems.
This is life as a hag lit novel. Act 1: ridicule wrinkled necks, sneer at those with scarves.
Act 2: admit defeat, start wearing scarves. Use the offcasts to join the outcasts.
We’ve draped diaphanous scarves across male statues’ genitalia. We’ve made long skipping ropes from the heftier scarves and played Double Dutch on pavements during school runs. We staged a mock execution of anti-ageing creams - using scarves as nooses - in front of beauty salons, until the police were called. Then we positioned scarves across the unmanned police station car park - spelling out ‘ageist arseholes’ - and used a drone to take photos. That took ages. It got us labelled ‘HRT hooligans.’
We’re past the midpoint. We donate our scarves to Oxfam. Act 3: lift the veil; stick your neck out.
Faye unexpectedly cracks her knuckles. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Ready?’
© Lorna Easterbrook 2016-2022 All Rights Reserved
Top image: Front cover for 'Book of Nonsense' made by Lorna: leather and fabric on leather (with apologies to vegan readers)
