Phew! Round one is over! For those of you who didn’t see my earlier post, I decided to participate in the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition. Round one started on August 1st and was over by midnight on August 2nd. In that time, participants had to write a story no longer than 1000 words in length that complied with the three prompts.
I woke up early-ish (8 AM) on Saturday to see my prompts. Honestly, it could have been worse. A lot worse. I got:
Genre: Action/Adventure
Location: an underwater cave
Object: a dumbbell
Huh. Interesting. I started out right away writing a piece about a drug smuggler in an underwater cave. That was a quick one, taking maybe two hours. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the other 15 people in group 27 were also probably thinking along the same lines. It was time for some innovative thinking. Which is where Engish-major husband is very helpful.
“What do you think of when you think of action stories?”
Superheroes!
So I was off on story #2 about a superhero and her liar. It came out as an origin story and I really liked it. By noon on Saturday, I sent my first drafts off to a bunch of volunteer beta readers and went for a run. I did minor edits until dinner and then let myself take the night off with some friends. I was well ahead of where I wanted to be.
Day two was editing, editing, and more editing. I edited both stories down to a final draft (nicknamed ‘cocaine story’ and ‘fish story’). Both were line and content edited and under the 1,000-word limit. And then I had to pick. Talk about nerve-wracking! Shish.
After talking it through with my husband and my betas, I chose the superhero story. I liked it a lot. I’m not going to post it here because I think with 200 more words, it’s something I would want to pursue publishing. Heck, I might try to publish the other one, too. It’s been a long time since I did a publishing push and I have a lot of pieces about ready for it. Time to put on my big girl pants.
If you’re doing NYC Midnight, good luck in round two! If you’re not, think about it. I was skeptical, but this has been a really cool experience. I definitely want to look into doing it again.
Until next time, write on.
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Taking On a World of Words 
This sounds super cool (both the challenge and the stories)!! I’ve never heard of NYC Midnight until now. I’m going to have to check it out. Thanks for sharing!
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No problem! It’s been a cool experience so far. I hope you can jump in next time.
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