- Joined
- Aug 29, 2011
- Messages
- 122
- Reaction score
- 28
A better 2013?
Been a long, long time since I posted here. 2011 was a great year for me; I sold a handful of stories, including one to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. That made me eligible to join the Mystery Writers of America, which in turn made me eligible to submit a story to their annual anthology. The deadline to submit for the 2013 anthology was the end of January 2012, and the theme for the anthology was "What Lies Within."
I had what seemed to me to be a pretty good idea, but I dithered around with it, never getting more than a few pages into before feeling like everything I was writing was dreck. Maybe it was, or maybe I was just intimidated by competing with pros. Anyway, I never finished the story, and somehow missing that deadline seemed to throw me off balance for the rest of the year. In all of 2012 I only finished and submitted one short story, as compared to 12 the year before.
So this year I was determined not to miss the deadline. The theme this year was the Cold War, and once again I came up with an idea I liked, and this time, by god, I finished it. It's called "Pillbug," it's 6800 words long, and I think it's good enough that I at least am not embarrassed to have other people read it. Definite progress. It went in the mail today.
Now, the key is to build on this and make 2013 the Year of the Story . . .
Been a long, long time since I posted here. 2011 was a great year for me; I sold a handful of stories, including one to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. That made me eligible to join the Mystery Writers of America, which in turn made me eligible to submit a story to their annual anthology. The deadline to submit for the 2013 anthology was the end of January 2012, and the theme for the anthology was "What Lies Within."
I had what seemed to me to be a pretty good idea, but I dithered around with it, never getting more than a few pages into before feeling like everything I was writing was dreck. Maybe it was, or maybe I was just intimidated by competing with pros. Anyway, I never finished the story, and somehow missing that deadline seemed to throw me off balance for the rest of the year. In all of 2012 I only finished and submitted one short story, as compared to 12 the year before.
So this year I was determined not to miss the deadline. The theme this year was the Cold War, and once again I came up with an idea I liked, and this time, by god, I finished it. It's called "Pillbug," it's 6800 words long, and I think it's good enough that I at least am not embarrassed to have other people read it. Definite progress. It went in the mail today.
Now, the key is to build on this and make 2013 the Year of the Story . . .