Short Story Challenge

Happy Lunar New Year! I went to my parents’ house for dinner over the weekend for the end of year dinner and will be going tonight after work to celebrate the new year. It’s the year of the Tiger, which isn’t supposed to be great for me since I’m a Tiger. You would think when it’s your year it’d be good luck, but actually when it’s your own year you’re supposed to be more careful. Hopefully I defy the odds though and have an amazing year!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a writing update. I don’t think I’ve done one since the end of NaNoWriMo. Truth be told after NaNoWriMo was finished, which I found to be difficult because I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to write, I took a break. I wasn’t feeling inspired and despite having various ideas, I just couldn’t get myself to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

Then, in January my friend told me about the Short Story Challenge from NYC Midnight. I finally felt excited to write so I registered for the competition.

The way it works is people from all around the world registered for the competition. When registration closed, they randomly assigned all the writers into groups. Over 6,000 people are registered for this competition, there are hundred of groups with 28 people per group. Each group is assigned a specific writing prompt which consists of genre, subject, and character. This isn’t a collaborative writing assignment, it’s just how they grouped people.

Anyway, I was assigned horror as the genre, a detour had to be part of the story, and an airman had to be one of the characters. I used a horror idea I came up with last year that I never wrote and reworked it to work for an airman on a detour.

We had 8 days to submit our stories and for round 1 the stories couldn’t be more than 2,500 words. The top 5 from each group will advance to round 2 in April so I have a long time to wait!

If I make it to round 2 then I’ll be given a new prompt and 3 days to write a 2,000 word story. Another top 5 are chosen per group to advance to round 3 (2 days, 1,500 words), and then a final round (24 hours, 1,250 words).

I’m really hoping I make it to the next round!!

In any case, I’m starting to feel motivated again to continue writing and working on my princess adventure comedy. I also have another story idea, but I haven’t started that. I’m not really sure what to do because the Type A in me doesn’t want to start a new book when I haven’t finished the one I’m working on, but at the same time it feels normal to jump around to whatever project you feel most inspired about?

Another thing that has me motivated to get back to my writing is my binge watching of Kristen Bell’s new series on Netflix The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It’s a satire of thrillers and the way they filmed it like a real thriller and act very serious in it while everything is so absurd, just makes it that much more funny. The satire in it is just my style and is a little like how I’m writing my princess adventure comedy, except my book is more lighthearted satire and not ya know thriller, murder type satire.

I’ll try not to wait so long before my next writing update. Hopefully next time I’ll have some progress to share! Also, please cross your fingers for me that I make it to round 2 of the short story challenge!

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