Summary
Late start writing today at 6:45 a.m. (hey it’s a Sunday) and wrote a short time travel story called “Goodbye Mrs. Hopkins.” I thought it was going to be another piece of flash fiction, but not quite. At 1,300 words it’s very short. It is story #28.
I’m liking these very short stories right now. It’s like getting a nice gentle down hill stretch for the end of this marathon.
And then, because the finish line is in sight and it’s a Sunday, I wrote another one of my ghost world “Death by” stories. This time I stole a trick out of Dean’s playbook and started with a fun title and let that prompt the story. #29 is “Death by a Kiss” and is 3,900 words.
These “Death by” stories are turning out to be great for overall world building. I want to do some more novels like Drawing the Dead in that world that are more scifi-ish and go into how the world changes if ghosts can communicate with the living. These stories have been great to dive into aspects of that.
A quick pass on “Last Days with Mary” and “Let Go the Stars” (slightly different title now) and #26 and #27 are off to Dean. I ended up going with the first version of “Let Go the Stars”. The lesson there is, to give a story some time to air before deciding it doesn’t work.
Heard back from Dean on story #13, “Dancing Kite.” He liked it, just suggested that I make the child protagonist a tad older (good call). It’s worth pointing out that my “emergency” 1.5 hour story worked for him. Wow.
One more story to go!
Stats for Today
Strategies Employed: Seeing the finish line is giving me a last burst of energy
Lessons Learned: When your writing a new story every day for a while it gets a lot easier to write a new story every day (go figure!)
Words Written: 5,400
Hours: 5.2
Stories Sent to Dean: 2!
Story Summary
# | Story | Total Words | Done? |
1 | Woody and June vs. the Fungus-Head Zombies | 5101 | Yes |
2 | Daisy’s Heart | 5800 | Yes |
3 | The Disappearing Neighborhood | 2773 | Yes |
4 | Woody and June vs. the Grand Canyon | 6070 | Yes |
5 | Home in Time | 4483 | Yes |
6 | Wink, Plum, and the Bones that March | 5972 | Yes |
7 | The Stars in Hoshi’s Eyes | 2532 | Yes |
8 | Android Eve and Adam | 3512 | Yes |
9 | A Long, Hard Fall | 8475 | Yes |
10 | Fitz’s Second Chance | 2800 | Yes |
11 | Fake Jake | 1565 | Yes |
12 | With Light Years Between Us | 4670 | Yes |
13 | Life and a Starling | 2278 | Yes |
14 | Dancing Kite | 1524 | Yes |
15 | Jump in Time | 8768 | Yes |
16 | Death by Vodka | 2100 | Yes |
17 | Death by Cookie | 4094 | Yes |
18 | Ela and the Naiad | 3655 | Yes |
19 | Is Anyone Receiving This? | 1717 | Yes |
20 | Breathing in the Stars | 2400 | Yes |
21 | Woody and June vs. the Ex | 10232 | Yes |
22 | Article Seventeen | 2918 | Yes |
23 | One Last Trick | 4312 | Yes |
24 | Death by Apathy | 3373 | Yes |
25 | A Changeable Face | 5241 | Yes |
26 | Last Days with Mary | 2818 | Yes |
27 | Let Go the Stars | 861 | Yes |
28 | Goodbye Mrs. Hopkins | 1321 | No |
29 | Death by a Kiss | 3906 | No |