Writing short stories, again

(Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay)

Monday 9 August 2021

I didn’t start with handwriting on Monday morning after all. I saw some news about a flash fiction writing competition that closes in November, and as I’m trying to write for competitions, and as this is only a short one, I thought I’d look into it.

Then I added it to Asana and my glimmer/glow spreadsheet. And I updated the glimmer/glow spreadsheet short stories worksheet to include competition entries.

I also opened a new folder on my browser for writing competitions. I’ll add calls for submissions to this.

Once I clear this double ghostwriting job, I want to add new short story writing to my daily schedule. (I also have a novel to add to this, as well as the second project management book.)

As I write mostly very short stories (i.e. 500 – 2,000 words), then the schedule should look something like this:

• study the market for competitions and calls for submissions
• add project(s) to Asana & glimmer/glow spreadsheet
• 1 week before: (for competitions & anthologies, also read previous winners & contributions); brainstorm ideas; choose 1 and noodle with it
• Monday: outline short story
• Tuesday: write 1st draft
• Wednesday: edit 1st draft; type 2nd draft
• Thursday: edit 2nd draft; print 3rd draft
• Friday: proofread 3rd draft; make revisions; submit; record submission
• maintain Asana & glimmer/glow spreadsheet as I go
• repeat

For longer stories, such as the Tarot Tales, which are 3,500 words each, I’ll allocate longer writing times.

Once I was happy with my Asana project for writing competitions, I duplicated it and tweaked it so that I now have a project for new short stories too. I need to start writing new short stories again, but these won’t necessarily be going to any traditional market.

The process will be:

• submit to competition (where applicable)
• submit to traditional market (where applicable) (after comp closes), OR/THEN
• epublish on Medium – either in a publication I write for, or my own
• epublish in new fiction magazine (just my stories, long and short, including serials)
• epublish exclusively on Kindle Unlimited for 3 months
• collect in an anthology
• epublish anthology exclusively on Kindle Unlimited for 3 months
• epublish anthology on Draft2Digital
• buy ISBNs
• publish anthology paperback
• publish anthology hardback
• publish anthology large print
• publish anthology audiobook

Honestly, I can faff for England when I put my mind to it.

Once I’d done faffing, I made myself a cup of tea and started work on the ghostwriting. I had either 6 chapters to write, or 11,875 words, whichever came first. I managed 5½ chapters and 11,228 words. And I finished work at midnight.

By the end of the evening, a cold was starting to take hold, so I submitted my work, had a cup of hot milk, and went to bed on some Benylin. I will either wake up feeling refreshed today, or I’ll be throwing a sickie.

Here’s what happened on Monday in the end:

• faffed – a lot
• created 2 new projects in Asana
• updated glimmer/glow spreadsheet
• wrote Chapter 25 Ghostwriting Book 5 (2,077 words)
• wrote Chapter 26 Ghostwriting Book 5 (2,087 words)
• wrote Chapter 27 Ghostwriting Book 5 (2,054 words)
• wrote Chapter 28 Ghostwriting Book 5 (2,153 words)
• wrote Chapter 29 Ghostwriting Book 5 (2,119 words)
• wrote part of Chapter 30 Ghostwriting Book 5 (737 words)
• wrote today’s blog post (524 words)

Words written today = 11,227 words