But Apparently I DO Have The Sort Of Face That Can Inspire Writing Contests (NOT!)

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of major deadlines and illness too. (I've been battling a bit of a cough and riling up the neighbourhood dogs since I apparently have the ability to bark louder than they do; but far worse than that is that my mom and aunt both ended up in hospital with double pneumonia! Such overachievers, they are. They couldn't just be content to get pneumonia in merely ONE lung each - no, they had to go for the whole deal!)

Anyway, the stress and worry and fatigue were all starting to get to me one day, when I decided to just take a bit of a break. By keeping myself tethered to my laptop, of course. (Why, don't you take a break like that too?) I opened a South African news site and saw that my favourite humour columnist, one Mr. James Clarke, had just published a new column that very day!

I settled in to read with a cup of coffee, only to almost choke on it the next minute. Because right there, in his column, much to my UTTER astonishment and delight, I saw my very own name in all its hideous* glory!!

It was truly a lovely surprise and a heart-warming pick-me-up on a day when I had been feeling particularly overwhelmed and down.

And a few days later, I sat down and wrote him this e-mail:

Subject: Y(our) 55-Word Short Story Contest

Dear Mr. Clarke,

Oh my word! And I thought that I was a procrastinator!! You see, for the past three and a half years, I’ve been meaning to send you an e-mail to inform you, Threnody, the Slow Spokes (remember, my little term of endearment for your Tour de Farce team?), your E*D*I*T*O*R, the esteemed members of DENSA and the rest of the Stoeptalk group that I have left the United States, returned to South Africa and that I am now living right under your nose – well, sort of… okay, not at all – in Stellenbosch.

I have to tell you, living among all this fermented liquid inspiration has done wonders for my writing career. These days, I’m working as a freelance journalist, writer and blogger. (You’ll be happy to learn that I’ve refrained from trying to compose any more limericks though…) I’ve also remained an avid fan and reader of Stoeptalk through the years and thanks to the web, I’ve been able to read it wherever I’ve been in the world. So I was absolutely delighted (and utterly floored!) to see my name in your column again! Tell Threnody that I’m not even offended that my mail was misfiled with the teabags (even though I’m a fan of coffee, myself.) My sister, however, is very concerned about the fact that your secretary hasn’t made you a single cup of tea in a decade!

Since I’ve sadly never been in possession of the kind of face that can launch a thousand ships (ED: More like the kind of face that can SINK a thousand ships), I’ll only be too happy to be the girl whose long ago e-mail inspired her favourite columnist to launch a 55-word short story contest! Does that mean that I’m not eligible to enter though? I hope not!

Then I proceeded to tell him all about my clumsy attempts to write tiny tales on twitter and even took a (long) shot at entering a few in his/our contest.

HE WROTE BACK!!!

However, before I am able to tell you what he said in his e-mail, I have to tell you a bit of a back story. But I'll save that for next week, when his new column will be published.

*Yes, I loathe my real name. But that's also a story for another time.