Psst!   …You!   Yes, you.

It’s me, the small, vaguely fluffy one, dying of embarrassment in the corner.

Anyway, come here, they’re busy and I’ll tell you why ‘Create 50’ is like a good friend.

SUPPORT.

If you are shy, like me, you can send a story to cyberspace and no one says; ‘Rejection’, ‘Not in our remit’, or ‘Sheep’s away’ i.e. ‘Flock off’, or such like.

I wanted to enter ‘Twisted 50’ but as a spec scriptwriter, focused on edits and confidence building for ‘LSF’ instead of braving it to enter.  Yet, when I read the stories, I realized, not only what a high standard there was, but how many familiar names there were as well.  It made me think, if they can maybe, I can too?

The thing is, everyone has different perspective.  So, though I’d never written horror, I thought I had something to give and like a good psycho, I’d give it a bash.  Hem… Hem…

My three stories ‘Four Walls’, ‘Deviance’ and ‘A Glasgae Kiss Goodbye’ range from a seven pager about a bloke trying to kill himself, to a piece of, practically, flash fiction about… well, that would be telling.

You don’t realize that what you experience daily makes you consider life in a different way.  A relation of ours took his own life and it made me wonder, why?  How can you want to kill yourself?  What’s going through your mind and how do you square it with yourself and your belief system?

That led me to my character and imagining how being locked in the same room would make you go over and over what led you to that point, even if, in the process, you lost sanity pondering it.

Stories I read opened my eyes to the gamut of styles possible.  Some had similar theme but all were different in view and execution, heck, even with execution!

The fact that people are kind enough to read what you write and feedback to help you, makes you a better writer and reading what other people write helps you pick up where you can improve, or where you can help someone else to.

If you ask me why you should enter, I’d say COS, Collaboration, Opinion and Support.

So, next time the bandwagon passes, I’m the small, vaguely fluffy one, banging the drum for ‘Create 50’, so no one stands embarrassed in the corner.

Eileen Wilson

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