The Story Match Challenge—Day 5: July 11, 2015

Before:

I woke and checked out how Dean Wesley Smith was going on his July Story Challenge. He’d completed another story, amongst all the other publishing things he does, and then he talked about short stories and how they’re helpful in discovering novels. On this, I have to agree. I have found three or four different worlds in writing my flash fiction and poetry pieces, and there are several of those that are demanding to have novels of their own.

Today’s word goal is 2,400, match or minimum, depending on what the story wants, and then I hope to catch up on some other work. I also didn’t want to still be typing at midnight.

During:

I started writing at 09:30 with the opening line: Serpent by name, serpent by nature, and the idea that I wanted to revisit one of the worlds I had discovered. My mind was hedging towards the pixie dust or Odyssey settings, and I ended up finding myself writing about one of the lizard creatures from yesterday’s story. I tried to keep the story short, but it just didn’t want to be crowded into a short version, so I ended up with a 4,600 word story.

Sometime during that time, I read an article about Melbourne’s trees being given email addresses so people could report problems with them, and I had the spark for a flash fiction story. I jotted down the idea so I could get to it later.

Between chores, family and food, it took me 8 hours to complete today’s words.

After:

I finished writing the idea I had for a piece of flash fiction (455, speculative), but decided to call it a day without writing the other two flash pieces of 3 poetry pieces. I wanted to spend some time with family.

Results:

Story Match: Completed—Melerom Joins the Dance (4,607 words-science fiction);

366 Days of Flash Fiction: Partially completed (1/2)—Tamran’s Trees (455 words-speculative)

Blog Entries: 2—The Story Match Challenge, Day 5 (356 words) and Progress Report, Week 2, July 2015 (726 words)

Word Total for the Day: 6,182 words