404 - Page not found
Hi,
It's me, Patrick...
I'm just sitting here wondering what you were looking for and, to be honest, I've kinda drawn a blank.
I'll keep at it until I come up with something that works for both of us. While I do that, maybe you can find what you're looking for by browsing my site via the navigation menu above.
Or maybe try searching my site. Yes—I know, I know! That might mean searching my site again, but as Ernest Hemingway famously said when he first began searching: "The first search for anything is #404."
If you haven't already, you could check out a list of my published stories or, while you're here, check out what the first draft of one of my stories looked like.
Below is the first draft of HOW TO READ A SHORT STORY: A 12-STEP PROGRAM. This draft took less than a minute, which leaves the handwriting little more than the transcription of brainwaves, but the rewrite took several weeks. The story was later published in Wet Ink (Issue 20, September 2010), and was also used as a starting point for an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald in which Jane Sullivan contrasts my recommendation to savour individual stories with a reflection on her own tendency to move directly from one to another.
I see reference to Paul Rudnick's 'How to read a one act play' but recall that this story was more a response to Paddy O'Reilly's 'How to write a short story'. Then it's:
"1. (Make yourself comfortable) Do everything else that you think might need doing."
"2. Make yourself coffee[?]."
"3. [indecipherable] ...open the book to the contents page, calculate which story is the shortest...Begin reading...Flick ahead to...."
"4. If its: RC [Raymond Carver] from the Lish years [indecipherable]... Alice Munro... Chekhov [indecipherable]... Updike [indecipherable]...."
You get the idea—or not!