Sarah's writing journal

Have longish finger nails for the first time in, well, probably forever. Real ones too, not falsies. It's amazing how much difference it makes to everything I do. I tap away at the computer keyboard and it makes a completely different - tappier - noise. Even scratching my head feels like someone else is doing it. I think that's why I always kept my nails short before - there was something creepy about having a dead part of you still growing away. Can see though that a character with long nails would behave differently from someone with short ones, but I can't remember anyone writing about this before. Hmmm... on reflection, maybe with good reason!
Working on 'setting' for a days workshop tomorrow. One of the exercises is on finding a very odd object in a familiar place - adds great tension. There was a whole book of short stories written on the theme - a wedding cake in the middle of the road. Have taken a short story - This Blessed House - from Jhumpa Lahiri's brilliant collection as an example. In it a young Indian couple move into their new house and the wife keeps finding Catholic 'paraphenalia' hidden everywhere - including a 3-d postcard of Saint Francis taped to the back of the medicine cabinet. I was in Sorrento at Easter, and there were some bizarre hologram religious posters you could buy at roadside stalls, including one of Mary which started off smiling but she gradually started crying as you moved your head.