Day 7: Short Story Marathon

Summary

One week in, 4 stories away, 26 to go. Yeah, this is starting to feel like a marathon.

Up very early and threw out yesterday’s start on “Home in Time” and started fresh in first person with the correct name. And wouldn’t you know it, things are moving along nicely now that I’m pointed in the right direction. Those 1,000 words that were trashed were not a complete waist, I got to know my character and his situation. I got about 2/3 through and should come in under 3,500 words.

Made a few tweaks (mostly fixing some weather related stuff) on “Woody and June vs. the Grand Canyon” and sent it off to Dean.

Stats for Today

Strategies Employed: Restarted a story when it wasn’t working.

Lessons Learned: A story that is working feels very different than a story that isn’t. I don’t have real tangible terms for that, but it’s kind of like when a picture snaps into focus, it’s suddenly there.

Words Written: 2,600

Hours: 2.3

Stories Sent to Dean: 1

Stats for Week #1

Roundup for the first week:

Total Words Written: 22,900
Total Hours Writing: 23.25
Average Words/Day: 3,200
Average Hours/Day: 3.3
Stories Sent: 4
Total Words Sent: 19,750
Average Words/Story: 4,900

My stories are too long on average (in running terms, the course is harder than expected and taking more energy), but I’ve compensated for that by putting more time in than I planed.

So far, all good, but I’m not sure I can keep this pace up and that means either writing shorter stories or going longer than 60 days.

Key Lesson of the Week: Letting go. The pace of this challenge has forced me to let go of stories before I am comfortable doing so, and also forced me to let go of stories, or pieces of stories, that are not working.

If you care to catch up on the week, here are the links: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6.

Story Summary