Ree-flections (of things done)
My words are still trickling very slowly. But I’ve taken to browsing my pretty notebook in which I’ve jotted down all my favourite microfics. Most of these stories are tiny – created for Twitter and its original 140-character limit. I’m now playing with these tales and sometimes expanding them a bit. So, if I’m not writing, then I’m at least ree-writing. I’ve shared one such ree-written story in my ‘Something I Created’ section below, with the accompanying illustration made from scratch.
LittleOne and I made inflatable chickens with disposable gloves. As you do. This was inspired by a version which landed via whatsapp.
I saw a koala at work in mid-July! I’m lucky enough to work in a place near a small forest/reserve filled with the kind of eucalyptus trees koalas love. This means we get to see the occasional koala, but not enough to take them for granted. This one had gathered an admiring audience to watch it sleep.
We had a sunrise recently where you could see actual sun rays. Made all the more evident by the missing sun ray. I’m not sure if the missing ray was caused by something mundane, like a cloud at the right place, right time. But if there’s an option for a spaceship, I’ll go with that.
This was a very beautiful dusk sky. Taken through the deciduous tree I mentioned in my previous issue. I did a photoshopped version of this pic where I supersaturated the colours for fun, but this is the original. Pause and breathe.
After nearly 18 months’ gap, I revisited my Dodo Au Gogo blog and found a piece in my Drafts folder. I wrote it a few years ago, but I never shared it. It’s one of those moment-in-time ones – when LittleOne was littler and my Indi-pup was still with me. It’s a heart-on-sleeve piece, with precious memories and moments that would have drifted out of my reach for ever if I hadn’t written them down. So I’ve published it.
Writing & Creativity & Random Cool Finds
Here’s a frank and funny four-minute speech about the life of a writer given by a writer at a fancy Simon & Schuster gala event.
Here’s a book made of cheese. Yes, literal cheese. In a book. In libraries.
There are many famous writers who doodle. If you doodle, you’re in good company.
Ever wondered if you can fall from a plane and survive? Here’s a teenage girl who did just that. Then, she had to trek through a jungle for 11 days to get help.
The Internet of Animals – this is a big, ongoing, amazing story of tracking animals and their migratory journeys around the world. So much to learn.
Something I created
Twirling
In the village square, the piano accordion music twirled and swirled. It sang as it wound its way around the fast drums and joyfully dancing bodies.
It rose, higher and higher, into the night. Past the golden lanterns, past the rooftops, and past the tops of the trees. Until it felt to the girl as if the music was calling to the very stars to come to earth and dance.
And yet, even though the music thrilled and thrummed across her skin, beckoning and joy-filling, the girl hesitated at the edges. Too shy to venture onto the cobblestones. Too self-conscious to join the dancing villagers.
Instead, she retreated onto the quieter path, the one beside the square, the one behind the tall hedge with its shimmering explosions of yellow star flowers.
Here, she couldn’t be seen. Here, she could only see the flowers, the sky of ocean-nights, the stars. Here, the music and its rhythms came flowing over to her.
She held out her arms – carefully at first. As though she needed to catch the music as it fell from the sky.
Then she started twirling. Slowly at first. Then faster and faster. She twirled around and around with the music as her lavender skirt flared. And she laughed. Joyfully, quietly.
Backstory: This lil microfic was born out of two, separate long-ago Twitter microfics – the ready romance of a piano accordion making merry music rising into the air from a town square in one fic, and another about a girl twirling to some invisible music when she was out of sight of the rest of the world. As luck would have it, I’d scribbled both these stories side-by-side in my Notebook of My Special Words. Reading them one after the other, I was struck by how they flowed into each other as a longer version of the same scene. And now, here they are. This story now lives here.
The words were already there. The image, my friends, is something else altogether. I didn’t know how to create an image to suit this story. I swear, it is SO much easier to write a story to an image than the other way around. In the end, I did this image with pen and paper, then I took a photo and painstakingly played with it in my photoshop express app. (The app has been frustratingly glitchy of late, but I’ve also realised has a ton of extra tools on it now.) I’m pretty proud of the end result – stick figures and all!
Thank you
Du fond du coeur, thanks for reading x
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Find my scattered self online: My Dodo Au Gogo blog | My BlueSky | my website.
Ree-Imagined Worlds 
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