The Domestic Goddess, Writing, and My Last Day of Unemployment

It’s been a really eventful week, and I’ve had a blast. My sister, Sharyn, had to go to Canberra for a conference and decided to stop by and make some potato bake. I’ve been writing a whole lot, largely thanks to T.M. Camp, whose constant updates of his epic project have proved pretty inspiring. I have also enjoyed my last week as an unemployed bludger....

My sister Sharyn lives in Katherine, Northern Territory, and is scatterbrained, skinny and hilarious. Because she lives so far away, she used the conference as an excuse to duck down and visit with us. It was really special as we hardly get to see her. Also, there is a goodly sized gap between us--she’s thirty-something and I’m only in my twenties--so I didn’t really know her all that well as a young girl. Growing up has given me an opportunity to get to know my sister. It’s like meeting her all over again. She has such a big personality that it’s easy to fool yourself in to believing that she’s not nearly as outrageous as you recall. Then she comes calling and completely dashes those illusions.

All gushing aside, she makes the best potato bake using potatoes, cream, cheese and (a secret ingredient that has been removed in the interests of making this our first ever super secret family recipe!). Not kidding! When she told me that she was using that to make a potato bake I died a little inside. Turns out, this potato bake is so good that it should probably be a sin to make it some other way. In fact, if you checked in some obscure gospel like Azariah* or something, you’ll probably find that it is. If it’s not, I invite God to taste it and then tell me that there is any goodness in deviating from a perfect recipe.

She left yesterday. I looked in the fridge for left overs but found none, and have missed her ever since.

I took a huge break over the four day period that Sharyn stayed with us, but I have been writing fairly consistently. I have four pieces of flash fiction in the works, each beginning with a ‘first liner’ that people helped me pluck at random from this thread on the roomtowrite.com forums. (For those who care to look, yes, at some point at night last night I did decide that ‘the ocean was dark and livid’ would make a fabulous starting line. I have since retracted my opinion.) My four starting lines are:

My eyes fluttered and my last breath crept from between my lips as I slipped into the darkness of death.

He burned it all.

“Some scripts just wind up in the trash!” That’s what he said to me!

Isabel watched the ants wandering in the bottom of the glass bowl, then lifted her magnifying glass and smiled her gap-toothed smile.

The last one wasn’t the original prompt, but I couldn’t remember the old one off the top of my head and it appears that I’ve, er, misplaced . If I find it, I suppose I’ll simply do five. I can do it. I’m tough. I also have three poetry first lines, and I can do those, too. Really. I’m a beast. I win all. I would have had them all done by the weekend if I didn’t have to work tomorrow.

I’m a bit nervous, I think. I don’t think I want to work and grow up and stuff.. Hopefully it’s the kind of job that makes the day pass quickly....

*I think I made this book up in my head, but it sounds very biblical, doesn’t it?