Don’t get too lost while writing.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a new short story. Finally, I’ve completed and edited one. Over the last week, I made numerous changes as I hunted out the soul of the story. After sleeping on it on Friday night, an idea popped into my head, and in walked Orion. Suddenly, I need to write another eight hundred words. By the end of the day, after numerous read-throughs and more editing, I reached the point where it was ready to submit. Or I thought it was.

Let me explain. I have sitting on my computer a file containing a collection of flash fiction I had published by Black Hare Press, a small independent publisher based in Melbourne, Australia. I decided to put all the stories I had published by them into a single collection. The only problem is each tale is told in a hundred words, so the book wouldn’t be very long, even if I added in the longer stories I had published by them.

Some of these books by Black Hare Press contain my work.

To solve this problem, I have come up with a cunning plan.

By using each of the flash fiction (drabbles) as a theme, I’ll write a much longer piece. The first of these stories I completed yesterday. The hundred words became two thousand, eight hundred and twenty words. At one point, I was worried as the main character developed and grew on me. I started to think I could turn it into a novella, but I had to stop myself. I needed to stay focus.

I’m working on a novel at the moment, and have two paintings to finish before Christmas, too. I must stick to my plan and complete the novel first before thinking about my next writing project. It’s far too easy to come up with ideas.

Each month in my home, I run a writing group, so I need a piece of work to read out to the members. Nothing longer than two thousand words. My plan is to take one of the flash fiction pieces and edit them into a longer story for this job. Of course, I could read parts of my novel, but I find you have to explain the plot to anyone who didn’t make it to the group the month before.

Yesterday evening, I tried submitting the new short story to CafeLit, but because it’s been a while since I last did it, it took me ages to fill in the submission details. Grammarly told me that there were mistakes in my story too. Feeling tired and frustrated I gave up and went to bed.

It was the best thing I did because I gave the story another read-through and made more changes. On visiting the submission site again, I found it straightforward to submit now that I wasn’t so tired. Hopefully, I have tightened the tale and made it flow better.

Fingers crossed that the publishers enjoy reading it.

Have a great week.