dirty martini - dirty bastard!

i've been invited to contribute to an anthology of short fiction. i got some advice from another writer who has had more experience with anthologies than i have, and he advised i prepare and submit two stories instead of just the one. i have one short that i wrote ages ago that i think would be just the fit, so that left me having to write the other. as, as usual, i thought about it for ages, and i couldn't come up with anything.

i generally write form my own experience. which isn't to say that i deliver word for word things that have happened to me - i take experiences i have had, and build stories from them. so, generally, i would sit at my laptop and think, 'what has happened to me in the past that i can use as a spark to start this story?'. generally this works for me. here's the rub: the day after our performance in canberra, we were interviewed by a guy from bbc one radio. as excited as i was at the prospect before the fact (and as we followed him to a deserted bench behind tilley's cafe), this quickly disintegrated as the mic was switched on. it wasn't a terribly fun experience - questions were curly, and one that i can remember verbatim-ish went a little something like this - 'so, asian-australian identity. is it real? does it exist?'. hmmm. so, as an indirect result of that experience and a few others, when i sat down to do the usual 'what experiences from my own life can i use blah blah', i felt a definite snag in the thought process.

i panicked. i fretted.

when i was done panicking and fretting, i decided that instead of reflecting, i would fabricate: i would utilise my 'artistic license', and i would make shit up. so i have created a character who is not me, who lives a life that is not mine, who has experiences that i have not had, who drinks cocktails i cannot stomach...
so far, the experience has not been that bad at all. i quite like living vicariously through my characters!