July 2, 2017

Day 32: Short Story Marathon

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

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Robert J. McCarter


Robert J. McCarter is the author of more than ten novels and over a hundred short stories...... learn more

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