Barely a week ago, caught in a deep creative rut, I came across a challenge. It grabbed me, pulled me out of the sticky embrace of procrastination and filled me with ideas. The kind of ideas that make your heart shine and your head clear and your mind think in those good kind of spirals that paint a bigger, better picture with each turn.

That challenge is Alphabet Superset by Struthless.

It’s quite simple. There is a theme, there is a style and there is a form of output. Each week I choose a topic that starts with a different letter of the alphabet – from A to Z. And then I create, along with thousands of other people who are answering the call to creative action.

My output is a short story with a matching picture.

My style involves English language (not naturally as I’m not a native speaker nor do I live in an English-speaking environment), having a different protagonist tell their story each time, and turning the first sentence of every story into a little art piece using the letter of the week

My theme is:

The many colours of being queer

Being queer is normal but it is also not in the most brilliant and terrifying way. There is adventure, shame, angst, fun, hate, excitement, doubt, support. Queer people are part of various marginalised groups. They are BIPoc, disabled, poor. Or they are privileged in every part of their lives except their queerness. They are accepted and supported by those around them or they are excluded and demonised. Or something in between.

Queer people have many genders, all ages, live in any place in the world. They are trans, homo-, bi or asexual, inter, aromantic, genderfluid and so much more. Queerness is even more colourful than the diversity of its flags.

There is no way to fit all the queerness into 26 short stories. But I can try to tell 26 unique ways of being queer in 26 stories from the point of view of 26 fictional queer characters. This is my Alphabet Superset.

Who am I to start such a project?

I am queer in almost the most privileged way possible. I am a white cis woman who happens to fall in love with people regardless of their gender, and who has never experienced any harassment or discrimination regarding her queerness. So when I draw on my own experiences there is limited material to write about. But this project is not (only) about my own queerness. I acquire inspiration from queer friends and acquaintances and from stories by and about queer people around the world. The aim, of course, is not to retell them, but to do what writers do: create stories by weaving all these little threads of inspiration into unique patterns.

I have thought of myself as a writer for most of my life. It started with little children’s stories, then there came never-finished fantasy books, poems and pseudo-deep blog posts. I wrote some short stories of which’ publication in hindsight I’m only partially proud and started (and partly finished) a few more books without publishing them. (The plan, of course, is to change this status quo in the future. In the near future, according to the requirements of Alphabet Superset.) As well as being a writer I am also a historian, a climate activist, a roller derby enthusiast, a new wife and an even newer sort of foster parent. Not sure how this is relevant to the project, but this is the me starting it.

How will this look like?

Every week on Friday I will post a short story about a fictional queer character. Each story has a topic (=title) that follows the alphabet. I will be posting the stories here on my blog, on Medium and on Wattpad. Feel free to read them wherever you like! You will also find the matching letter art on my very fresh Instagram.

The first story featuring the letter A will go live on Friday, 8 September. I’m so excited to write and publish it. And I’d love to have you on the ride.