Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

“I received a message from a Mister Stamford , informing me that Menac’s to go to his school.” Count Saturnine took a long slurp of his soup. It stuck to his upper lip and dribbled down his chin. Barnaby Featherspoon stared at him before reaching over with his napkin to dab it clean. “For heavens’ sake,” the Count batted Featherspoon’s hand away. Menac sniggered. His mother slapped him across the back of his head. “Who is this Stamford?” she asked.             “Damned if I know.”             “Damned anyway, I expect.”             “What was that, my dear?”             “Nothing, my husband.”             “Turns out he’s on the Grand Council. Upshot is, Menac’s going there.”   ...

And so we've arrived at the final countdown. The last few days of November are waiting. How's it gone? Here in New England it is the evening of the 26th. The supermarkets are crammed with turkeys, and every conversation focuses on how far people intend to travel for Thanksgiving. My mind rests upon how this month has gone for everyone. Did you make the progress that you hoped for? Did you conjure the words, or edit the words, or polish the words to the extent that you planned at the start of the month? And the thing I wonder about most, as we visit this little cafe that sits in the cloud, is how our target-setting and aspirations have affected our writing practice. I will be the first to confess that I have struggled. Those first few days when I found time to write for an hour and work on my opening chapter were soon lost: I was preparing for my GRE examination, drafting my applications for university admission, chasing down pieces of paper which evidenced the marks a...

The Space Between the Words Now you have gone into that space Beyond language You have gone into the pauses in our conversation The time beyond time and time within time You are in those moments when we sit in the audience Waiting for the curtain to rise And the end when the curtain has closed And the actors have taken their bows You are within the pauses of the bird’s song When we strain to hear the next note In the water between the fish In the traveller’s silence within a foreign language You are in the air that fills the sky In the moments after the sunset You are between night and day Spirit next to soul You are in the space between the words The moment before the artist picks up her brush By Vicky Letterman

    There is just one star in the sky when she pulls herself out of the water. Glancing up, the moon hides against blue-black infinity, shows itself, then hides again. Bursts of cloud weave, dance, disguising chunks of the moon’s white surface nibbled into scalloped edges. The green and white sea flexes it’s power, playful, deadly, siren-dangerous, as always. The tide begins to turn. She must be careful. The sea can take you back if it wants to. She can’t go yet. Not yet. The salt tastes delicious around her mouth. She scents the silt and seaweed remembering green, purple and darkest blue from her water world. Warm wind washes over and around her and welcomes her at last to the land. She is exhausted but cannot rest; her time here is measured by the tide. There should be enough, just. Yes, there should be enough. This is not her first time. She turns her back to the sea and the single star, shining softly down on her, and makes her way, slowly, up the sand. Now the cr...

Lie down and let me tell you about snow about geometry and silence two parts cold to one part marvel let me tell you of the twofold mystery of its nature how a single flake dissolves at once how two flakes linger when they gather whitely on the ground Lie down and give your face to snow drifting down like petals in a spring orchard taste it on your tongue a fleeting kiss of ice Lie down and listen to the wind wind through the apple trees twisting the bare twigs into complex runes against a curtained sky spelling out a recipe for snow Sally Zakariya

His feet repulse her. It’s her own fault. She threw a pair of socks at him telling him to put them on and keep them on. He just took it to heart. The socks, one folded into the other, were odd. One yellow. One black. He’d not taken them off. Not for days.        He’s lying on his side now, away from her. She reaches out to his back. It’s freezing. She squeezes her eyes, waiting to hear him not breathing. Ten, nine, eight. How long should she wait. Seven, six. The bedside clock quietly matches the seconds. It’s years since the alarm went off but the ticking is soothing. Breaks the silence. He used to rise before her. Brought the tea. Left the house at eight.       He snorts - a mix of breath and snore. He moves his foot back, brushing her calf. She stares at the ceiling, moving her legs to the edge of the bed. Stretching one foot from under the quilt she wriggles her toes. Long wisps of grey hair spread out on the pillow. He nee...

Cafe Aphra's Alternative NaNoWriMo has been getting some great feedback from a steadily increasing number of writers. People have been telling us how they've been more committed to their writing through setting their own targets. These conversations are less about how many words we've written and more about our reflections upon our writing practice - how and where and why we write. We've been celebrating and sharing our writing and our reflections upon writing via this blog, the Cafe Aphra facebook page, through emails and face-to-face conversations. And this all makes me feel more guilty about the fact that I have fallen off the bandwagon. It's not just that I've slipped. One minute I was there, sitting among the trombones and the music boxes and all the other bits and bobs which would be part of any halfway decent bandwagon, and the next minute I'm all alone watching everyone else share the bandwagon's journey over the horizon. There are many ex...