Where I End

by Sophie White

geansaí forged in coarse, rope-like wool by the brisk hands of the women in their lives. The geansaí does the direct opposite of preserve life—it is the life-ender. It swamps them, colluding with the sea to pull them under. There is even contingency for their deaths worked into each geansaí, a particular turn of wool—patterns and cables, in cuffs or necks—to identify which family owns the corpses when they’re returned, not only unrecognisable

Finally one last question: What three pieces of advice would you offer to an aspiring writer? Read constantly! Buuuut if a book isn’t grabbing you after fifty pages, give yourself permission to ditch it and pick up something else. I’m a big DNF’er (did not finish) ever since it dawned on me that we only have a finite number of books that we’ll get to read in our lifetime (around 4000 according to some sources). I can’t be forcing myself to slog through something I’m not enjoying; books are there to entertain us and provoke us and move us, not bore us! Make friends with rejection—it’s a big part of a writer’s life. Apparently, Stephan King’s Carrie was turned down by around eighty publishers before making its way into the world and changing everything about modern horror forever! Make friends with other writers. There’s no understanding, love and support quite like that of a fellow artist.