Tuesday, May 18, 2010

You go away for two weeks and suddenly:

  • Your flat smells faintly of damp socks, but your flatmate has purchased Fifa World Cup 2010 so you're willing to overlook this
  • You're on the (rather long) longlist for the Frank O'Connor Prize two months before the book even comes out
  • There is further evidence online that your book is not a figment of your imagination and one day soon  people will be able to buy it
  • Eight pm sounds like an acceptable bed-time
  • Your dreams no longer involve photocopiers or teleconferencing
  • It's still completely dark when you get up at 7am
  • Your desk at work has been moved from the penthouse to level 1
  • Your greatest earthly desire is a cup of tea
  • Your handwriting is shot
  • Your typing is shot
  • Your eyes go blurry after an hour in front of a computer screen
  • Your greatest earthly desire is a fourth cup of tea
  • Your attention span is shot
  • You cannot fathom working the long hours you did in April
  • You've lost the ability to use an umbrella without it prolapsing
  • You can't think of anything you actually want for tea, only a long list of things you don't want (chicken, chicken-fried steak, salmon, sushi, pizza, burgers, giant frozen margaritas…)
  • Eight-thirty pm sounds like an acceptable bed-time

    2 comments:

    Birkenhead Henry said...

    Every entry for the Frank O'Connor Prize gets long-listed! Whatever happened to the English language?

    Craig Cliff said...

    True enough the long-list isn't a huge feat... I was just surprised as I didn't know my publisher had submitted my book. Not all NZ publishers go to the expense/hassle or just plain miss the deadline.

    Not sure how the fact there were 57 short story collections worthy of submission is a bad sign for the English language... Feel free to buy a copy of my book, read it and rip it to shreds (but please don't skip straight to the ripping).