Inner Deuce Yaself!

[Elimare]

So I noticed it's gotten a bit quiet round here lately. I'll put it down to the fact that people have been away on their summer holidays etc. But we're also beginning to get a few members here who have drifted in from other places so maybe its time for a 'getting to know you' type thread?

Right, I'll put my money where my mouth is and lead the way...

I'm Elimare (aka 'Eli' - pronounced 'Ellie' NOT 'Ee-lie')
Living and working in Dublin.
Have first drafts written for three novels but just haven't gotten the gumption up to edit them - or indeed do anything even resembling moving them into a state where an editor \ publisher \ agent would even look at them.
Been writing short stories since I was very young, including that tortured adolescent phase of bad poetry involving death, blood and black clothes and eyeliner. Yes, I still have those 'poems' in binders at home.
Got involved with flickr fiction through Donal in an attempt to improve my skillz. (ironic 'z'.)

what about you?

[Neil Struthers]

Hi folks, I'm Neil, and I'm from Derry. I've been torturing sentences since I was about 16. Currently engaged in a slow, year-on-year process of improvement in my storytelling skills, which is why I appear here now and then.

My most grandiose ambition at the moment is to write a story worth reading before I'm 40. That gives me 15 14 years, which may not be enough time. I find that I am too easily distracted by things like spider webs and amusingly-shaped clouds.

As far as I remember I met these folks through NaNoWriMo--or as I like to call it, My Yearly Procrastination Hell. I will not be pretending to think about trying to do NaNoWriMo again this year. Ficktion has been great fun though; I've gotten a lot out of contributing and reading the contributions of others. Long live the Ficktion group, I say.

Literary interests--science fiction, weird fantasy. Anything that engages the imagination.

[TadMack]

Tadmack, residing in Glasgow, Scotland, actually from Northern California. Masquerading as a student (and someone who can tell left from right, and understand Glaswegian).

I blame Aquafortis for dragging me into this; she told me a Welsh language guy told her about "this great short story group..." I tend to write... "family stories," that are about familial quirks. I keep trying to write the perfect father-daughter story, perhaps in hopes of someday mending my own brain in that arena...

I too, have been writing since I was "young." (Hah.) Feeling very old, but finally having a little success in the writing area -- I'm excited to be getting galleys in September for my first book with Knopf/Random House. I have dragged Pancha into checking us out, should she not choose to delurk; she's a great writer Aquafortis and I met during our MFA program. I really like reading what everyone else comes up with -- so hopefully people will be back from vacations soon and reading and writing again. I appreciate that this group still exists!

[Donal Murphy]

Hello all, I'm Donal and this website is all my fault. I started the Flickr Fiction idea over on my site and I am immensely chuffed to have watched it grow over the past year into a little community of hugely talented people.

For my own sins and under the influence of a strange and terrible compulsion, I have been scribbling things down on bits of paper since I was a young gurrier. I have found the weekly Ficktion exercise to have been a great help in pushing myself to improve the writing and starting to see the first, slow beginnings of something bigger.

I live in Dublin with fellow Ficktion participant and serial knitter Teaandcakes and regularly spend too much time drinking with Elimare on a Friday night, when we should be writing our stories. Myself and Elimare also subject ourselves to the yearly ordeal of Nanowrimo, which I recommend to all you aspiring writers as a means to hurl yourself bodily into the act of writing and remove the barriers, blockages and conditions that accrete around our brains.

[Pancha Diaz]

Pancha here, delurking. I come via TadMack, who I met along with Aquafortis at our MFA program. I'm a manga editor in San Francisco, and on the side I write and occasionally draw webcomics. Most of my stories are heavily basted with fantasy and sci-fi, if not outright marinating in the genres. Since I graduated, I've fallen into the bad habit of churning out a few pages of comic script and then not writing for another month. Hopefully, I will turn over a new leaf here.

[Teaandcakes]

Hi, I'm Teaandcakes, or Isobel in the real world. As Donal mentioned we live together, which is how I got involved with the Flickr Fiction, and I knit. Quite a lot. In fact, it's taken over from scribbling as my main hobby, which I'm currently frustrated with, as I'd prefer to be doing both. That, combined with recently re-reading my previous efforts and being disappointed with them is part of the reason I haven't really been playing along for a while. I need to get back in to the routine of it as its the only way I'll get better. And sort out the whole confidence thing.
Anyway, at some point soon I may return, hopefully.

[Mari Davies]

Hello I'm Wierdo or known to some as Mari. I know wierdo is misspelt but that's how it's stuck. I'm a mathematics student at Aberystwyth and therefore spend most of my time drinking or on the internet. I am not at all confident with speaking or writing English which is the main reason I joined when I read Chris Cope's flickr fictions on his blogs. Also I swallow books (not literally most of the time...) and would love to create my own if it weren't for hideous procrastination and lack of inspiration.

I am a dreadful contributor as I havn't written and barely read since moving to Ning but I blame that on failing my exams, being home with PS2 boyfriend and Sky, and also my laptop dying. However I return to University next week and am therefore likely to be bored sometimes....

[aquafortis]

Hi everyone. I'm Aquafortis, also known as Sarah, and I've been writing--and drawing--since I was very small.

However, despite my childhood forays into making fashion magazines for cats and dogs, and my teenage years producing steno books of bad poetry and derivative science fiction cyber-thriller novels (happily, all two of those remained unfinished after the first 30 pages or so), I had no real intention of becoming a writer. I studied art and psychology with the very misguided idea that I might become an art therapist, when what I really wanted to be was an artist or illustrator. I graduated, studied some more art and became embittered for reasons I won't go into here.

Then I took a break from studying art and edited e-mail newsletters for two years, during which time I started writing freelance humor articles for the company I worked for. I thought, hey, I can do this writing thing every day. In fact, I used to write a lot. What happened? Since my new boss was a jerk and we were moving out of town anyway, I decided to quit my job and go back to school (where I met TadMack and Pancha). I write the occasional article, but mostly novels for young adults as well as literary short stories. I also do a whole array of other random crap as a freelancer, like desktop publishing, editing, business writing, calligraphy, and design.

I, too, found Flickr Fiction through Chris Cope. I found Chris Cope through my interest in Welsh language. Which is a whole other story.

[valshamerlyn]

Hi, I'm Valsha, sometimes known as Valshamerlyn, but that's too long to say. I've only just found this thread, which is why I didn't reply in September ... I've been asleep for the last year, it seems.

I started writing when I was young, like most of ye. Bad poetry. Derivitave novels. The whole shebang. I met Donal and Elimare through Nanowrimo and followed them here! As Nano is the only time I ever finish anything, the idea with Ficktion is that I'll develop discipline by writing every week.

Yeah, that worked.

So the new idea is that I'll have fun writing again. And maybe cure my addiction to the ellipsis ...