I stopped writing poetry around the middle of university, essentially upon leaving my teenage years, and most of the writing in the Artist section is actually now over a decade old. Whilst that particular vein of raw emotion seemed to have been mined, it did not mean I stopped writing (obviously, given that you are reading this), but most of the subsequent fiction was never shared beyond a handful of people.
Much of the fictional prose I write tends not be fully formed short stories, but rather isolated scenes and slivers of dialogue. At one stage my intention was to collect them so that they might later be expanded into something more substantial or joined together to form a larger whole. Over time, I came to appreciate them more in their current form: loose sequences that allude to the worlds from which they are plucked, to other stories with details for the reader to fill, open to interpretation and more universal as a result.
I think of these pieces as “Shards”, shattered fragments that reflect their world and whose shapes offer hints at the stories from which they came. As a new project, rather than having them gather digital dust (static, white noise?), I plan to post one of these Shards each week in the Artist section, which has now been reorganised appropriately. Shard I is available immediately. Expect considerable variety in length, style and content, but I am interested to receive feedback and to see what people particularly enjoy; there is every chance I may choose to return to some worlds or characters in the future.
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