First Line Fridays: part 2/5
Behind the scenes of a short story collection: this week, it's the end of the world. No, really. Also some dysfunctional women.
Hello and welcome to another instalment of First Line Fridays, delving behind the scenes of my new short story collection, In The Movie Of Her Life.
17 Worries
“1. That there’s something wrong with you.”
As I have noted before, I love things that play with format - this is a very short story in the form of a list, detailing the various why-you-are-shit thoughts going through one woman’s head. It’s about an abusive relationship (sorry, the men do not always come out well of these stories), and the list, I think, lets it explore that but have it mostly be in the gaps, rather than shown on the page. (We know this story, after all, don’t we?)
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It Wasn’t The Suit
“It wasn’t the suit, exactly.”
I wrote the first version of this story more than ten years ago and I still remember how uncomfortable it made me. The attraction-to-someone-you’re-not-supposed-to-be-into thing turns up in a lot of what I write, but but but this guy - although he is eighteen - is a student of the narrator’s and that is just a world of ick. Except I think that ‘ick’ actually propelled the story along - the attraction and then the very firm reminder of what this woman’s role in his life should be, at the end. It’s not quite that she’s punished, but she is - nudged, a little. I don’t think it’s quite a morality tale but it’s probably the closest to it you’ll find in this book full of dysfunctional women.
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Heatwave
“It was the summer of the heatwave when I decided I would break up a marriage.”
Yeah, this section of the book is just Bad Women, really, isn’t it? “It was the summer…” is, I forget whether intentionally or otherwise, a reference to the opening lines of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar - that immediate setting of the scene and the narrator.
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The Last Party
“The day after the announcement, they started carting them off, mid-hysterical scream.”
This is, I hope, enough of an intriguing line to get people interested, and suggests that the world of this story may not be quite the one we’re used to. This is a story about the end of the world - a teenage girl at the end of the world, more specifically, because you can take the writer out of YA but… - and was written, or at least the first draft of it was, with a Leonard Cohen song on repeat. I am not usually a ‘write to music’ person, but as an exercise it is sometimes useful to try, and sometimes you get a story out of it.
Next instalment: phones vs reality, first dates, Rapunzel and reproductive rights. In The Movie Of Her Life is published by Doire Press and is out now. Corkonians, I’ll be in your neck of the woods on Thurs 24th April, if you’re about.
Ohhh, Claire, this book sounds like one I would devour in one sitting. Ordering right now!
I’ve been debating starting a new series focusing on the first lines of (other people’s) short stories myself, and this may have clinched it! Can’t wait to read your collection.