CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

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

One of the things I’ve noticed since doing this challenge is that my hourly wordage has increased. At the beginning of the month, it was sitting around 595 words/hour—and that was with revisions of pre-written words as opposed to pure new words. This month, my average has so far climbed to 538 words/hour of pure, new words. I have written every day, as opposed to having many days off, and I’m happier. I’m also enjoying my writing, and I am discovering what Dean Wesley Smith terms the ‘power of the challenge’. In other news, I have decided to experiment with universes in a separate short story challenge, because it’s something I really want to try. Even though I got a bit of a taste of that yesterday, I want to take it further. I’m really looking forward to that challenge. So, back to this challenge. Yesterday, I had a nap, and it proved both much-needed and disastrous. Much needed because I didn’t get enough sleep the night before – all my own fault; I do tend to push things. Bu

This not-so-little lady was roaming around the house. She was low enough on the wall that I almost walked into her, but she wasn't aggressive and I caught her in the plastic container you see there, using a piece of thick cardboard to close the top. The trick is not to put your hand on the base of the container above the spider, where it will look like a predator about to strike. That causes the spider to panic. This one, we put outside to make her own way. She'll be around somewhere if one of the other spiders didn't eat her.

After finishing at half past midnight, last night, I thought I’d try something different today—like actually writing first thing, instead of distracting myself with a bunch of other stuff, like blogging, reading blogs, playing Facebook games (which I tend to do when I feel stressed and which I’m quite addicted to as a result—fortunately, I’m more addicted to writing, so it’s just a matter of switching tracks). Anyway, I digress. I got up early—it’s the only way to kick the habit of staying up late—and headed straight into the first flash fiction piece, which ended up being a weird bit of science fiction about rabbits. By midday, I had managed to complete the three flash fiction pieces and poems that go along with this challenge, but I hadn’t even started the short story. It had been 6 hours since I started writing. I was a bit concerned about that, until I remembered I had been writing blog entries and sorting out my head during that time, as well. By 1:30 p.m. I had written 3,528

I woke up on July 8, 2015, to find that Dean Wesley Smith had met his challenge with another 3,000-word story—A Matter for a FutureYear . Seeing the final count, I breathed a sigh of relief, because I’d been dreading he’d write more and I was still just feeling my way. I noticed his story was set in his Seeders Universe, and envied him being able to draw on a developed setting. I’ll add developing my novel settings to my task list - as in, focussing more on writing them and so forth, which sounds silly, but I know what I mean. I see lots of writing ahead. The opening line came when I glanced up and saw a butterfly flitting across in front of Princess Alexa in Barbie and the Secret Door —so, no one said where the inspiration had to come from. Of course, there was no gilded lawn in the scene, and the palace was out of sight, so where the rest came from… well, of that, I’m not sure. I was 68 words in when I realised I was writing science fiction and not fantasy. It was a hard

So, in Australia, it was July 7, 2015, and in the U.S. it was the still July 6, which, according to the rules of my private challenge, meant I had to write a 3,000-word short story. As part of his personal short story challenge , Dean Wesley Smith finished BestEaten on a Slow Tuesday . I had had a very unproductive day—couldn’t settle, was still suffering from the flu, constant interruptions and so forth, and today I had come the decision that I needed a way to push myself past the excuses and onto the next level, so I let his challenge inspire me to undertake a challenge of my own, and today was the first day. So. The result? Well, let me see. I started the challenge late—at around 10 p.m., because that’s when I finally decided to go for it—and I didn’t finish writing the short story before midnight, so it counts as a loss. On the upside, though, I reached 2,315 words by 0013, and I’ll finish it on Day 2. This piece surprised me by being science fiction. It starts with a

Okay - so, I wasn't going to post this until August... but then I decided it was time to have a bit of courage. So, here goes: On July 1, 2015, professional writer, DeanWesley Smith , started a challenge he’d set himself: to write a short story each day for the entire month of July, which he then intended to publish in a single volume. In his blog posts leading up to the start of the challenge, he blogged about what he was going to do and why he was going to do it, and then he blogged about the power of the challenge as he wrote. You can find the first ofthose blogs here , and I recommend them. I didn’t come to it until early in July, and I read it backwards from where he was at to where he had been. It was nothing short of inspiring. And I thought, I thought, I should try that . So I looked over the challenge he’d sethimself , and I realised I had been doing what Dean was doing, but more inconsistently and on a much smaller scale. He’d been writing a novel a month an

Being sick for pretty much all of June was not fun, but it did mean that I got a fair amount of reading done. Another of my favourite authors - and a book I remember ordering through book club when I was still in junior high. My, how the years have flown.

Yeah, I know, right? You’all thought I was already a writer. Well, so did I, but I was a writer who had to have a day job, who wasn’t allowed to devote herself to being a writer full-time and so I never felt quite real. See, and that’s wrong. Because I was a writer. I wrote with the idea of making a living from it, but I came to realise that I also wrote with the knowledge that I would never be allowed to go full time, that making a living from it was a long way away, even unlikely, and then that wasn’t true any more. In the last six months, I’ve had to come to grips with some fairly major changes, both to things I thought I knew, and to personal circumstances, and that hasn’t been easy. For one thing, I lost my job. Actually, I was forced to choose between accepting having working conditions withheld and keeping my job, or completing the degree I had started with the permission and encouragement of my boss. “We not only support this kind of thing,” he’d said, “but we encourage