(vol 1) CHAPTER 34: “Strong week”

First off I’d like to thank folks for their responses to last week’s blog post. I never once suspected that I was the only writer in the world to feel like I did but, having fellow authors tell me that they have experienced or are experiencing the same lows felt like a little, virtual group hug.

Cheers guys.

NO FLASH IN THE PAN

That wasn’t the only thing to put a smile on my face. Flash fiction wise it’s been a good week. First off I managed to once again enter two stories for Flash! Friday. Despite doing this a couple of times before, I don’t think I ever managed to put up two entries that were as strong as each other.

That’s not to say that I’ve ever put forward a piece of crap just for the hell of it. What happens comes from the afterthought, the days following the entry being posted when you re-read the story and think, maybe that could have been better or that the idea was weak or forced. It’s that taking a step back and getting perspective.

This weekend I really felt that WASHED AWAY and MOST VALUABLE could both go the distance and was excited to discover, on the Monday afternoon, that MOST VALUABLE pulled off an Honourable Mention, my third since joining.

But that’s not all I wrote at the weekend. I dipped my toes into the waters of Flash Frenzy, a similar contest hosted on The Angry Hourglass blog. A slightly higher word count and time limit gave me a chance to mix it up a little. I was quite proud of my entry, THE VIEW, and look forward to this weekend to do it all again.

Before I move on, a big shout out to Michael Seese for his winning piece on Flash! Friday. He now has three wins under his belt and has become something of a legend.

And also congratulations and big thanks to Jacki Donnellan who not only won Flash Frenzy this weekend but was also the person who convinced me to pick myself up after last week’s downer and give another contest a go. As with all the Flash fiction writers I’ve conversed with over the last few months, she is an example of a wonderful human being.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Planning for this year’s NaNoWriMo is going well. I’ve been spending quite a few lunch breaks and a couple of free evenings working on the history, characters and, if you look at the FALLEN SWORDS tab, the world building. Yep, that’s right, I have a world map.

I plan to work on a more detailed version over the next week or two and I will be posting updates regarding the project under the FALLEN SWORDS tab as we near the wonderful month that is November. I will be writing 50,000+ plus words towards the project which will hopefully give me a nice head start once I begin posting them from January.

NOVEMBER

And talking of NaNoWriMo, I can’t believe that it is almost here already. Feels like only yesterday that I was grabbing every free second I could with my dying Netbook as I smashed all of my previous records.

It’s going to be weird after several months of flash fiction, short stories and that novella to suddenly go back to something big like a novel. Hopefully the episodic nature of the project will blind me to the true scale of the piece. Sometimes it can be daunting when you know the ending is still so far away but this time round I could end up with an ending each day.

Let me know either in the comments or on twitter (@BrianSCreek) if you have a history with NaNoWriMo, what you like or dislike about it, and if you’ll be joining in this year.

Writing buddies in November can be a God send.

See you in seven.