One Two Three Anthologies

My new year started with the kindness of a gift. I was out walking and exploring and found myself in a cul de sac of well kept houses with glorious gardens and a huge white gum tree in the middle of the footpath. An older man crossed my path and as we wished each other ‘Happy New Year’ he looked at me pointedly and asked whether I liked rhubarb. When I answered ‘Yes’ he pulled out a bunch from behind his back and offered it to me (the intended recipient neighbours were away). I happily claimed my unexpected gift and continued on my way past the warbling magpies and lengthening shadows home. Each book story, poem and script is a gift carefully crafted by its author or authors. I’m looking forward to a year of reading and a year of books.

Three sunflowers standing tall with a radiant beauty in the morning sun, one slightly hidden behind the others, are a reminder that there will soon be three Minds Shine Bright anthologies available for lovers of short stories, flash fiction, poetry and scripts.

Sometime in 2024 Confidence 2 will be joining Confidence and Storm Seasons 1, bringing pieces together from across the globe. Each anthology contains original works that shine brightly – providing inspiration and insight through fiction and poetry and creating moving, entertaining and highly imaginative interpretations of the Confidence and Seasons themes. 

Next month we will be announcing the winners and commended entries that together form the Shortlist of prize winning entries that will be published in Confidence 2. 

At the end of the month, we are heading to South Gippsland to continue the celebration of our Storm writers and to hold a Light and Shadow creative writing workshop at Inverloch Community House. Locally based Storm writers Sarah Rasmussen, author of short story House of Feathers and Gayle Beveridge author of short story The Lightning Traveller will join us. Our seconds Seasons writing competition Light and Shadow closes for entries on 31st March 2024.

Minds Shine Bright is committed to supporting writers. To make writers more visible we have added a winners list to our home page menu and this month we are starting a new Writer in Focus initiative. Every couple of months we will be profiling one of our writers or poets so that you can enjoy some of the stories about the storytellers.

Our first writer in profile is Françoise Thornton-Smith the overall winner of our first Minds Shine Bright Confidence writing competition in 2022. 

Writer in Focus

Françoise Thornton- Smith, Wartook VIC, author of Confidence 2022 short story Red Bikini 

Françoise Thornton-Smith is a writer and volunteer fire-fighter. Born in Newcastle, New South Wales, she studied languages and the theory of literature, moving to the Netherlands for fifteen years where she established a translation and manual writing business. 

Françoise kept a diary from the age of twelve and dabbled with creative writing. After moving to the bush in Australia in 2002 she focused on her creative writing skills. In 2003 she joined the Country Fire Association (CFA) as a volunteer and is now 1st lieutenant in her brigade: the brigade’s first female officer. She has attended more than 120 fires and drives a 13-tonne CFA tanker. 

Françoise’s creative writing on fires and rural life has been published in a number of anthologies and she has consistently won, placed and received commendations in creative writing competitions. 

In Red Bikini how did you interpret the confidence theme?

I wanted to explore how a person could rediscover the resilience and confidence they had always had, but then lost, in the middle of a frightening emergency and disaster. Natural and personal disaster are intertwined. The protagonist realises she can still be meaningful and offer something in life, even as the bushfire engulfs much of what she loved and valued in the past. Confidence is the ability to pick up the pieces and get moving again. 

What are you working on now?

I have a number of incomplete texts that I return to every so often, and every so often I manage to write a whole lot more in one or other of them! Some of the texts deal with childhood and adolescence, while another one is science fiction/dystopia. Interestingly, the short story format does not seem to be adequate for several of these texts. They might turn into novellas or novels – in which case I will be working for much longer on them. 

What advice do you have for new writers?

Work regularly on your writing, even if only for a few minutes a day. Try to build up a collection of texts, and preferably leave a text ‘on hold’ for several months before looking at it again. When you start entering competitions you will already have a selection of stories to draw from, or to adapt. Don’t keep chipping away at one text for a long time: you might end up eroding its solid basis. Once you do decide to work on a text again after a few months (or even longer), you can also find yourself doing much more than chipping away: you might amputate whole sections, but also add wonderful new sections, you might view your original idea in a whole different light. It helps to distance yourself from your work for a while. 

Who or what inspires you?

Life in the bush and in a rural environment, and firefighting experiences are significant sources of inspiration, but I also learn much from reading. I love reading debut novels by Australian writers. I also revisit old favourites like Hilary Mantel, Patrick O’Brian, Arthur Conan Doyle, Pat Barker and … far too many to mention. My partner also writes, and our conversations provide mutual inspiration. I can imagine that a writers’ group is very inspiring, but I do not belong to one. 

We hope that you enjoyed our January update, we look forward to announcing the winners of CONFIDENCE 2 in our February update.