A Coping Mechanism

This week's story is: A Coping Mechanism. [2261 words]

This story is very unusual- I wrote it, again, way back when I was first starting to write and it was one of the last ones I did for my first collection- the one with all the rules. I wanted to be more meta-fictional (I've always wanted to do that) and have unusual styles of writing where the writer is a character as well. I've found since that often this can be distracting and hard to maintain for anything more than a short story (unless the 'character' is basically yourself) and don't generally do it but this was an attempt at the height of my interest in that style.

I was quite depressed at the time of writing it and had done several other 'stories' about being alone and  frustrated in love. When I read this back in Feb I immediately started disliking it for being another mopey angst-fest but I think it's saved by it's ending. I gave the whole thing a bit of an overhaul, freshened up the style and made it sound less like the real me and changed the title (you do not want to know what it was originally called...) and now I'm really proud of it. I see it as being a writer's story, a demonstration of why writing can be so good for someone. It's about that whole idea (which I firmly subscribe to) that I don't write for any other audience but myself primarily.

I'd say my weakest style is anything contemporary or hip. This is the best I think I can get in that direction, my work now is always vaguely (or sometimes specifically) set in the past. I hope you like it!

B A Jones 21/04/2014