I’m Not That Kind of Writer (or Challenge Fail… Again)

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Once university resumed in late January, 2016, I soon discovered I wasn’t going to be able to put the work in to achieve the grades I wanted AND complete these challenges, so I chose to bow to the necessities of life—and to give myself room to work towards my OTHER dream. So, I can’t do it all. Well, who knew… and now I do, too.

By the end of January, I had achieved the following Story-A-Week Challenge and Holiday Extension Challenge goals for January:


  • Week 1: ShortStory630—Rendezvous at Raptor’s Rest: now scheduled for release January 13, 2017.
  • Week 2: ShortStory508—Lord of the Vortex: All I had this week was the title, and the story came from there. It ended up being 4,045 words long.
  • Week 3: ShortStory483—Headlines from the Starman (was: The Royal Starman in the Moon): added around 1,100 words for a total of 3,669 words.
  • Chapbook5C—Rocky Rides the Space Range (Otherworld Adventures #4: was meant to be completed in Week 2 of December 2015, but was finalised in Week 3 of January. This chapter book ended up being around 13,000 words.
  • Chapbook14J—Legacy of Hearts (Wheelchair Adventures #3: was meant to be completed in Week 1 of January 2016, but was finalised in Week 3, and ended up being around 7,700 words long.


And then university started and my writing just… stopped, although I did manage to get the last few chapter books published.

By the June break I was thinking ”I have to be better than this!” so I set about trying to work out a more sustainable approach, and this is what I came up with:


  • First, I would start by scrapping the challenges until I had a schedule going.
  • Next, I would set up a regular publishing schedule of everything I had completed – that was pretty much the short stories.
  • And then I would write during the semester (hopefully) and do another pre-publishing round at the end of the year so I could focus on writing, again.

In the middle of this, I learned I was supposed to be uploading a copy of anything I published to the National Library of Australia, so I focussed on that for a week, before getting the publishing schedule back on track. With titles releasing bi-monthly through to the end of October, all I can say is that it’s getting there.

Now, to get the writing moving, again.
Location: Canberra ACT, Australia

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