Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog, page 16

Guide to flash fiction

I was delighted last year to be shortlisted for the Bridport flash fiction award, though I have written very little flash and am still not, to be honest, entirely clear of what it is.  I like it because it requires less energy than short stories, though flash is not just a case of trimming a short story to a paragraph or two, flash is its own thing, and it still needs to be crafted and edited like hell. A recent helpful article here by Vanessa Gebbie, from the Bridport Prize blog, on wha...

Something to make you smile when it is snowing when IT SHOULD BE SPRING

This made me smile (via Book Machine):




As did this (via Writers Write):

Dearie, dearie, dearie me

An excellent summing up of the skulduggery of the PACE trial here, the graphics are simply splendid. And not forgetting that its definition of recovery is dodgy as hell, and that it used Oxford criteria (where post-exertional malaise (PEM), the cardinal feature of ME, is not necessary for a diagnosis of 'CFS'), later changed to London criteria. Five million pounds down the drain and no one with my illness is better, but that didn't stop the media wetting its knickers over the results. Who ben...

A wee girl that breaks my heart, & googling viruses 30 yrs later

There are so many images in a week that can break your heart, but this wee girl in Pakistan selling flowers has stayed with me .

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An Edinburgh University book group is doing The State of Me and has invited me to chat to them. The chapters they have selected got me thinking back to the whole onset of illness, and I've been googling Coxsackie B4 (marvelling again how easy it is now to get information about an illness, about anything, back then it really was a case of going to the library, we kne...

Cooking in fiction

I'm not a huge Anita Brookner fan, but her novels are slim - I like short books - and I'm enjoying A Start in Life though I don't know when it's set, it is hard to tell. The first line grabbed me: Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
And I laughed when Ruth (Dr Weiss),  cooking for a man she likes when she is a student, asks for advice on how to make chicken casserole. Her mother's cook/cleaner/confidante Mrs Cutler says: Well, you can buy some chicken pie...

Latest research on ME and autoimmunity

Am so happy that bright minds are engaged in biomedical research  (though I, naturally, remain cautious about shouting anything concrete from the rooftops). This is interesting, latest from Kenny de Meirleir and Vincent Lombardi.  I am sure there is autommunity implicated in my own illness, since I developed uveitis a few years ago, which I hate even typing, I try to banish it, was so disruptive and frightening.
I wish the 'ME-CFS' clinic in my last post would include this little sni...

Dissecting Edinburgh; dissecting nonsense

I can only do readings occasionally so am very pleased about this (free!) event in a couple of months' time, part of the 'Dissecting Edinburgh' series at Surgeon's Hall, Edinburgh - 'Literature and Medicine in the Scottish Capital'. I will enjoy thinking back to the process of writing and editing the novel, much of which I did in bed, getting red felt pen on my pillows. I very much hope those who are running the new  'ME-CFS' Astley Ainslie Clinic in Edinburgh will attend - and those in...

Rickshaws and dizziness

I just love these rickshaws, though I haven't read the whole article. And I get pangs when I read about Karachi Literature Festival, I want to be there! If I could have the damned vaccinations, I could just go everywhere in one of those gorgeous rickshaws. And if I lived near Newcastle I would definitely take part in this research: Professor Julia Newton's looking at orthostatic intolerance and also cognitive impairment. Not being  able to stand for long is one of my worst symptoms, one...

The Panda Theory, Joseph Anton & an anthology

Gallic Books very kindly sent me a copy of The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier when I said last week  on Twitter that I'd had to return it to the library before I had finished. I started reading it last July (I think) and got a third of the way. I look forward to starting it again. I finally finished Joseph Anton, I had a lump in my throat when Salman's second son, Milan, was born, I was surprised at my emotion. I also have huge respect - and sadness -  for his ex-wives Clarissa Luar...

Creativity, pain & twit-twoo

In the current New Statesman TS Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Julia Copus - who suffers from endemetriosis - makes the point that there is more made of the connection between creativity and mental illness than creativity and physical illness. The link with the physical is just as significant, she says. She speaks specifically of the link between creativity and excruciating pain: 'But always after the pain comes the gradual, miraculous release from pain, and with it the sense that my stay in in...