Use it!

Before I start my post - we have a winner!! Bee the Book Crusher won the Shirley Marr contest! Shirley will be in contact soon.

Now onto Using it:

I had a very bad day. Well actually, my very bad day started yesterday when the taxi service decided to bump down my priority for people going to the airport (where did they think I was going!) and made me miss my flight. Then my flight home was delayed by two hours and when I drove home the engine light came on.

When I rang my boss to tell her that I'd missed my flight her words were "Sharon, you just can't catch a break can you." She's right. I've indeed had not just a bad couple of days, or even a bad couple of months but a year. The low-lights being the death of my Grandma in June followed by my father's terminal cancer diagnosis a week or so later.



Dad had to have his first blood transfusion on my son's birthday, he had a biopsy on my mother's birthday and he died five days before my birthday. I've never cried so much in my life.

I thought after everything I'd been through I was owed some good things in my life, but instead I have thing annoying little things still cropping up like missing my plane and two-hour delays.

It hit me after my boss spoke about how unlucky I've been, it would be a great concept to explore for a novel, are people owed good things if they've had a run of bad luck or are people who have gotten away with something terrible really going to get their comeuppance. I've started plotting the story.

So the lesson for me is, no matter what life throws at you, as a writer you can use it.

Speaking of which I have something special for you. It's the fast-fiction I wrote the day after Dad died.

The First Night Without You Here

The night is silent without you here. The house feels empty. Immediately I look to your bed, expecting to see you in it – but I know you are gone.

I embrace her for you, but my arms are not the ones she wants. She wants yours. Not mine. I move around the house in a comatose state – like you were before.

We finally go to bed, exhausted after hours of talking about you. Dreams come to take me, but her howling cries break the silent night and I rush to her in your place.

I hold her like I would my child, her body shaking from her sobs. She misses you already, even though it has only been hours. I stroke her hair and speak calming words, while my sister holds her hand. The hand you held for years, the hand that will never hold yours again in this life.

She calms.

“Would you like me to sleep in here with you tonight?” I ask.

She nods and whimpers a yes in response. I am lying where you lay, where you died, where your last breath was drawn, where you expired.

The three of use lay there as she rambles through her shock, talking about your last days, hours, minutes. We were told twelve months, then a few months, then a few weeks, then a few days. In the end it was a few hours.