For a lot of writers, November is National Novel Writing Month. The timing is challenging, to say the least. Hello, Thanksgiving? This year, we also had the twin delights of Pandemic Brain and The Election That Never Ends.
I had other plans for the month, which were sadly derailed. Back in the before days, I had contracts for two short stories to be published at this time. Unfortunately, the other human beings involved had their own schedules and travails, so Mundane Reality™ decided I would have only a podcast this month rather than new print stories. Those would have to wait until December.
My month, then, was focused on writing. Not a novel (that’s another conversation) but writing. Specifically, writing every day. And I did it! I even managed to crawl over the 10K finish line, which is my best stretch ever.
Because of various life events this past orbit (child going to college, pandemic, father’s death, work stupidity), I had a fairly large number of open files in my WIP folder. I decided that I would tackle as many of those as I could (with a target of 4 Complete Things).
I finished Four Things, too. Three of the stories had been languishing in the WIP folder, and the fourth was a completely new idea that occurred during the month.
Special bonus: On December 1, after I declared my self-defined victory, I gave myself permission to take the night off. So what did I do? I wrote a brand-new flash story that was pretty darn good. It’s sitting in the submission queue of a magazine, along with three November’s stories. The fourth — the longest — needs some moderate editing. I was throwing down words hard and fast at the end and I suspect that several key scenes will be removed or replaced.
Bottom line: I managed to complete Five Things in 31 days. Not sure if they’ll find Forever Homes but at least they’re not sitting around here, eating my snacks and messing up my Netflix queue.
New fiction is coming soon. Really.
