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Random Thought: New Year resolutions? Mine go in one year and out the other. If you set your time machine all the way back to when we last spoke (Dec 18th), you’ll see I reported that the annual Monterey County Weekly’s 101-word story contest results had not been released by press time, but I promised I’d have an update by my next post. Well… (insert drumroll here), today I can report that my five-year streak in the competition came to an end. Other than the first year when they only published a line or two from my work, every other year, I managed to reach Honorable Mention status, usually having two or all three of my stories published as Honorable Mentions. After submitting three stories this year (their limit), none made honorable mention. But…one actually took THIRD PLACE, so my losing streak has ended, or as I prefer to optimistically spin it, among all the losers, I came in second🤪. Below, I’ve attached the winners. In this week’s rating form, I’m asking for your thoughts on all three of the winning stories. Here’s the link. If you’d like a digital copy of the Weekly, you can see all the stories they published. Here’s that link. Since the paper came out on Christmas Day, I’m pretty much considering my third-place finish, my version of a Christmas miracle. Note: For the second year in a row, The Weekly required each story to contain a specific word (or variation of it), and this year’s word was “light.”
NOVEL NEWS & NOTES… On the novel writing front, although things had been moving slower than I’d like as I completely restructured the opening of Questionable Characters, I feel like the pace has picked up quite a bit. Despite my opening bit about New Year’s resolutions, while I don’t really consider this officially one of those, I have resolved to set a goal of ten pages of writing a day. Some days, this will involve a lot of cutting and pasting from my last draft. Some days will involve all new writing (mostly from the story threads about new suspects I added to this draft). Finally, some days will be a combination of new and old, as I update scenes from the last draft to reflect their new placement in the storyline. Before I let you go, I do have a bit of a favor to ask. As I write what I hope will be my final draft, I’ve been thinking about chapter lengths. In the current draft, I made a very intentional decision to dramatically shorten the chapters late in the third act, matching the increased tension while building to the climax. This whole idea led to my researching short, medium, and long chapters. According to the Internet, long chapters are best. So are medium and short chapters. Since that investigation wasn’t helpful, I want to know what you think. If you have a second (and didn’t already click the story rating link above), click it HERE and tell me what you prefer (if you have a preference). Primarily, I’m interested in chapter length for fiction. I’m not sure that non-fiction chapter lengths apply. As always, thanks for listening, and for following along on my writing adventures. Scotty out PS: Wanna catch up on all the stories and posts you’ve missed? Click here |
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