I’ve been following @liz_zarb on TikTok for a while and have really enjoyed her content, so when she shared recently that her collection of flash fiction was now on sale, I tamped down my aversion to buying from Bezos and ordered it. What a wonderful read! A Meditation on Mortality is what you’d expect from the title, a collection of short pieces of writing about death and dying, exploring the multiplicity of emotions and moods that can surround this event that is truly the one thing that we all have in common.

Liz writes beautifully, and as well as enjoying this quick and powerful book as a reader, it had me reflecting deeply on myself and how I feel as a writer. I love to write. Most of what I write now is non-fiction – work proposals. Book reviews. Support articles. Stuff that I enjoy crafting for readability, but that doesn’t really hit the creative itch that lurks in my soul. I’ve got a novel bubbling away in the background, and I’ve been writing a bit more poetry recently, but flash fiction isn’t something I’d thought about before – and I don’t know why! So I think that’s going to be my August project. I’m leaving it until next month because I’m currently devoting far too much time to a secret squirrel writing task that I want to clear off my plate first, and if I start thinking about writing flash fiction now I’ll be procrastinating rather than finishing that!

Speaking of which – sigh. Off to keep working on it. Why is writing about yourself so hard? Thanks for this collection, Liz. A fab way to start my Saturday morning