The first draft of The Cat Price marches on, and it grows progressively more entertaining (making me oh-so-aware of the massive edits the first few chapters are going to need to bring them up to snuff!)
Meanwhile, I was delightfully waylaid last week by the deadline for a flash fiction anthology being published by Scout Media this year. Though I had known about the deadline for some time through a writers group I belong to on Facebook, I hadn’t intended to submit anything. I’d never written flash fiction before, and didn’t think I ever would. Then, the day before the midnight deadline, that kooky voice in my head that likes to call itself a muse (but is technically more of an annoying mosquito) piped up with, “Well, why not?”
Why not, indeed? With a word count limit of 50-1500, it wasn’t as if I’d be making a major time commitment. Why not try it?
So with hours left to go, I smashed together a last minute entry and followed the link to submit.
Except MY last minute lagged behind the true last minute by three time zones, so I missed the deadline. (After 17 years on Pacific Standard Time, you’d think I would have thought to verify this point, but I guess I was too busy writing.)
No worries, though. Missing the deadline meant I could actually do things right and share my piece, Changes, with my writing group. They suggested some well-considered edits, which I promptly made. I’ll be looking around this week for a place to submit it.
Another story idea dropped on me from the ceiling of my living room in the form of a nearly invisible cobweb. It had somehow evaded my slapdash and lackadaisical cleaning regimen only to come untethered and drift down onto my upturned face. Voila! A new monster was born. The story, titled Watcher, is around 4500 words and needs to be edited one more time before launching it back into the atmosphere to see if it can find a home.
I definitely feel like I could grow to love writing short stories. It’s gratifying to breath life into an idea and, with an economy of words and a modicum of time, dress its bones in enough flesh to make it presentable. It’s almost instant gratification in comparison to novels, which seem to come along so slowly sometimes.
Anyway, watch this space for updates.
Now back to novel writing!