Day 34: Short Story Marathon. FINISH LINE

Summary

And… done!

A quick pass on “Through Other Eyes,” a bit of cleanup, and off to Dean!

And if you are wondering, I was up early and writing. Started another story that is a follow up to “Wink, Plum, and the Bones that March.” I wanted to dig into Woody and June #5, but needed to do some research first. Not a lot of writing today, but I gotta write!

Stats for the Marathon

Here’s the number for this thing as planned and as executed (since I did very little for the challenge today, I used 33 for the per day stats).

Key call outs:

1. I did this much quicker than I though and that made the hours/day high and my days very long.
2. Stories were longer than expected and finished word pace was better than expected. Total hours came in under my estimate which helped keeping the quicker pace.
3. I’m glad I did it faster. 60 days is way too long to keep this kind of challenge going. I think if I had taken that much time I would have ended up with longer stories. The faster pace forced me to get better at shorter stories and got me to the point, at the end, where I wrote 4 stories in 2 days.
4. This completely blows away all my productivity records. Looking back at my records, the most words I ever wrote in a month was 35,000. The scale has been completely re-calibrated.
5. This was exhausting and often difficult, but it was also extremely rewarding and frequently fun. I’m more in as a writer now than when I started.
6. This would not have happened without the steadfast support of my wife, Aleia, friends cheering me on, and the guidance of Dean Wesley Smith. Seriously. I feel so lucky and am so grateful for all the support.

I’ll be back soon with more reflections. I’ve got a busy few days and then heading out of town (glad not to be writing stories on a challenge, though I will be writing).

Next Steps

This is how things look today (will change, of course, as these things always do):

• Slooooow down some. No days off and some very long days, need to gear down a bit.
• Catch up on all the little business and household things I set aside while doing this.
• Reading fiction. That went to nothing a week in. I just didn’t have the energy or focus for it.
• Focus on writing Woody and June for a while. Both Aleia and I love this series and they’ve been so much fun to write. It will be a novel and likely will be serialized somewhere (stay tuned)
• I’ve got 39 stories (with this challenge and the 9 I wrote in my training month) to wrap up and keep at market. That’s going to take some time. I’ll follow up from time to time on how these stories fare out among the editors.
• My third “A Ghost Memoir” novel, Of Things Not Seen,  is back from the proofreader. That will be my next release and I will be re-branding the covers on the first two novels, so that’s going to take some time.

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Final Story Summary