I’d stayed up a bit late to get the short story submitted in time to the writing challenge, and that meant getting up late the next day as well. Once at my desk, though, I rattled through the faffy stuff, and I wrote the newsletter for January. This always takes longer than I think it will, but it does seem to be getting quicker each time.
The January newsletter was sent out yesterday, so if you didn’t receive it, check your spam folders and let me know if it’s not there either. If you’re not signed up to the newsletter, you can do so at any time by using the form at the bottom of most posts or in the sidebar when viewing posts on here (the sidebar is at the bottom on mobile devices, unless you turn them on their sides).
The next thing I did was start collating the writing challenge posts for a future publication: Writing Challenge 1: write a short story a month in a year. The stories I write remain my own copyright, and I can remove the content once I’m ready to submit the story anywhere or publish it myself.
I’m not sure yet on the ethics of saying what the prompts were or where they came from, so I might make up some of my own if there’s a problem there. (I will ask the question, so that if they say it’s okay to use them, then at least I have a record of that.)
For now, though, I created the main Word file (as it’s a compilation I won’t be starting it from scratch in Scrivener), wrote up the introduction and chapter 1 (or prompt 1), and added the first short story as an example. Then I vanished into the depths of rewriting it, titivating it and ‘chimping’ with it.
‘Chimping’ is an expression photographers use when other photographers have their heads constantly down, looking at their screens on their digital cameras instead of taking more pictures. I love it and I’ve nicked it, so now it’s mine as well.
I dragged myself away from the chimping and went into Canva. I’d already had a play with covers, so I made a graphic for today’s blog post. This is one of the books in the challenge series, the first one being last year’s publishing challenge. (Currently on the pile to be topped, tailed, read-through, revised, etc.)
First thing yesterday morning, the next writing prompt, target word-count and deadline went up on the challenge website, so I created a new project for it on ClickUp, worked out a sensible schedule this time, and transferred the new deadline to the FiloFax. My story was up too, with all the thousands of others, and I kept checking throughout the day for comments, but there weren’t any… I’m hoping now that the site isn’t a cliquey one. I won’t like it very much if it is.
One of my favourite short story markets opened to submissions this week for a set period, and I have a story idea I’d like to write up for them. I’m on their list of writers and we get to submit up to three stories per two-month period. (No prizes to those who know for guessing which market this is.) I think this story idea is a good one and I think they’ll love it, but I do need to get back into the habit of sending them three short stories every two months.
So I finished work and took my notebooks into the living room with me to have a noodle with it during the evening. I’ll know more about how it went when I start Monday’s blog post later today.
In the meantime, you have a fab weekend, and I’ll try and spend today catching up on all the client work I haven’t done this week.
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Sounds like a great day!
If you want to poke around some extra prompts, #31Prompts is still up on its own page, from the July batch, and Feb. 1 I’m starting a new #28prompts with new ones. I’m uploading & scheduling them this weekend to drop at noon every day on Twitter; not sure when they’ll go up on the other channels.
Thanks, I’ll do that.