The Story Match Challenge—Day 7: July 13, 2015

Today’s word goal was 2,600 words.

Before:

I woke late, but not sick, which put me ahead on yesterday, and I allowed myself to get sidetracked by some of the admin I needed to do to keep track of the short work I’ve been working on. I also got into a few house chores that have been a bit neglected over the last few weeks, so it was midday when I sat down with the aim of writing the story.

I used my new title generator for the title, rolling 11-Man of and 29-Autumn. All righty, then.

During:

The title, Man of Autumn, quickly changed to Man of Autumn’s Fire, and then to Fire Man of Autumn, and finally ended up at Autumn’s Flame. At a thousand words in, I knew this wasn’t on any of the worlds I knew, but it reminded me of some of the flash fiction tales I had written. I wondered if this colony would feature in future tales.

Somewhere around 1 p.m., I remembered that this was the week before university was due to go back, and that my materials might finally be available for download, so, in between downloading my compulsory readings and recordings for the semester, feeding the family and doing the washing and washing up, I continued to write.

By half past nine, I’d made it to 2,400 words, and had a fairly clear idea of where this story was going. This was a nice change from the last six stories, so I guess the practice must be paying off. With the advent of the university semester things were only going to get more challenging from here, so to be moving more smoothly towards an ending was a major step forward.

Downloading the university files took much longer than anticipated and it was 11 p.m. when I got back to the story. By a quarter past midnight, I had written another 1,900 words and the story was done, an unexpected piece about colonisation and the ecology of a new world.

After:

I changed the title to Autumnal Threat, posted the blog entry, and went to bed.

Challenge Successes

I only completed the Story Match story, today, and didn’t get to the flash fiction or poetry pieces, but that’s okay. I’m in the process of rebalancing to allow room for my university workload. Finding out what I can and can’t do is all part of the challenge—and I finished a story! And I enjoyed it.

Story Match: Completed—Autumnal Threat (science fiction-4,301 words)

Total Words: 4,735