Rosie Parry, London Independent Story Prize 2024 1st Competition Short Story Finalist 'What You Can Expect'

London Independent Story Prize 2024 1st Competition Short Story Finalist 'What You Can Expect' Rosie Parry

- Can you please tell us about you and your daily life?

I’m an advertising copywriter and a local councillor in South East London. So my daily life is near-constant work. Which I love, because I’m a freak, but also because half of my work is really fun and half of it is a huge privilege. You can guess which is which. As a reader, I’m open minded but as a writer I’m only interested in short stories.

- How often do you write? Do you have a writing routine? And what inspires you to write? 

In the last few years, all the time I used to spend writing outside of work has been eaten up by politics. The evenings I spent writing in restaurants or my bedroom are for public meetings and casework. So my ‘writing routine’ is non-existent, but I’m usually working on something at least sporadically. I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of writer who needs to write in order to live but more and more I notice a restless feeling, like something is missing when I’m not writing anything.

-  How did you develop the idea for your LISP-selected story? Is there a story behind your story? And, how long have you been working on it?

The story is as much about dysfunction as it is about grief. When you think about it, even simple grief is quite dysfunctional: all those feelings, nowhere for them to go. The kind of anticipatory grief Carole is experiencing even more so. It’s interesting territory because it combines one of the most emotionally intense states you can imagine – knowing someone you love is being hurt right now — with the most static: waiting. If your mother or whoever was being held hostage by a murderer, you’d be frantic, right? There would be a flurry of action; chaos. But if she’s dying in hospital, you have to sit around eating snacks and being polite to people. The death spiral is as mundane as it is horrific.

That contrast is why I interspersed the narrative with those very practical descriptions of the stages of the end of life. The content is all real, borrowed from various support sites. When I was at university, I had a summer job transcribing clinic notes in an Oncology department. The way Doctors talk about life and death in that clipped, clean register embodies the horrific/mundade contrast. Mrs S, a lively woman in her 80s, came to my clinic today. Sadly her cancer has returned and is now incurable. There’s your short story.

Then, after all of that, the death at the end of the story isn’t horrible or traumatic. It just happens, like it does in real life. The biggest, most distressing, most natural thing in the world.

- Can you please give us a few tips about writing a story?

There is no tip or hack that will unlock your practice. I think most writers just are. Almost all creative people I know filter everything through that lens of wanting to make and to communicate. So surely the best way to create anything is to start by creating a life that engages you with the world and exposes you to as many ideas and feelings as possible. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

- Lastly, do you recommend the writers submit to LISP?

Yes, submit to LISP. Submit to other writers, to friends. Anywhere.