Damian Robb

So, apparently The Head and the Heart released a new album almost a year ago without me noticing. Disgusting. The album in question is called Signs of Life and from the first track, All we Ever Knew, onwards, it’s a whole lot of fun.

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Current chain of writing days: 18

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I spoke via computer, satellites, fiber optic cables, and probably a whole bunch of other tech I don’t understand, to Brother Jonathan last night. Well, night for me, as I sat in my house in Melbourne surrounded by winter winds, morning for him, from his apartment in London surrounded by summer sun.

Whenever we chat, apart from spending a solid amount of time discussing how handsome the other is (we’re twins) and catching up on each others life, our conversation inevitably turns to writing.

Reading, and now writing, has always been one of the (many) bonds between us (concurrent handsomeness being another) and so it’s always beneficial to hear how he is going with his writing while also discussing where I’m at with mine. During this he mentioned that he hadn’t read anything new from me for a while, which is true.

Apart from these blogs, most of my writing effort has been going towards a single project, my novella for the horror anthology I’m writing with my podcasting pals. This is good, as it’s the only real thing I’m working on that has a deadline, and I’m enjoying working in longer form as it’s giving me more confidence that I can pull of a novel sooner than later.

The only downside is that I don’t get that sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing a project. There’s obviously the enjoyment of writing itself – the creativity, the challenge, the breakthroughs etc. etc. – but it’s having the thing done, a concrete, shareable, piece of work, that’s whole and complete, that brings the ultimate satisfaction. Also, sometimes writing sucks, it’s hard and requires a lot of mental effort, so finishing something gives a reward for all that suckiness, and while I assume the greater the body of work the greater the satisfaction at the end of it, I still want little wins along the way.

So, I have a plan; I like plans. Once a week I’ll write a piece of flash fiction.

I’m thinking three thousand words or less, depending on what comes out, and which can be spread over a fortnight if it’s particularly wordy. Not only will this provide me with the sense of completion I currently crave, but smashing out a story once a week or so will force me to not overthink while I write and just increase my overall portfolio. Best of all though it means I’ll have something to share and showcase immediately.

I’ve been wanting to add some pieces of writing to this website for a while (as I’m aware that for a guy who blogs about writing I have no actual examples of my work for any who are interested), but have held off as technically anything I put on here counts as ‘published’ and therefore is no longer able to be submitted to magazines and competitions. These will be just for fun and therefore immediately shareable.

I’m thinking Saturday will be flash fiction day, as I still definitely want to dedicate my non-working Fridays to whatever major piece of writing I’m working on, and despite, or possibly because of, their abundance of free time, weekends are usually where I get my least amount of writing done. Having something new with minimal pressure on it for me to work on every weekend should function to reverse this fact – hopefully. Who knows. Weekends are when drunk Damian shows up and there’s no predicting what that guy might do.

Finally, ideas for these flash fictions will come from the big backlog of ideas I currently have catalogued in a google doc appropriately titled ‘ideas’, some of which I’ve been desperate to explore, or from the plethora of writing prompts that exist out there on the world wide web (which I might write about for my next blog as this one feels like it’s getting long enough already).

I’m looking forward to it, hopefully you are too.

Talk soon

Damian