I won second prize!

And I am really pleased with that.

Jacob Black~n~pack did a fall anonymous one shot competition. The prompt was: What will future bonfires and the tribal stories around them be like?

Come on baby light my fire

It was anonymous so nobody knew who wrote each story. I posted something small when I noticed that they were not getting a lot of entries. I should have known! Everyone else was clearly putting some intense effort into their entries, and put them in at the last minute. There were some fabulous ones and seven in all by the closing date. I really didn't think my little story had a chance.

I love anonymous competitions.  They make it a level playing field. Popular people can’t sway the vote with all their fans voting for them. It also means that people, who have never posted something before, can place it anonymously and be judged solely on their words. A number of the entries were either from new writers or broke new ground for old ones.

I posted my story on fanfic too, for those who are not members at JBNP. I kept the wolf identity anonymous too, lol. Insert your own wolf fun. So much fun reading the reviews, where each person thought it was a different character.

Bonfires and Burns

I am Australian and we don’t do thanksgiving, but if I was thinking about what I am thankful for, then I’d say that I am thankful for all the writers who share their words with us all.

Nanowrimo

I like the concept of nanowrimo. For those who don’t know, the idea is that you register with the site and your aim is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. It sounds like a lot but it’s an achievable target of 1,600 words per day. Even easier if you made it three 600 word session targets.

They have a huge number of hints, resources, twitter feed encouragement, writing sprints you can participate in, etcetera. They also get deals with editors and software sellers for discounts to nano members. I think it can be any writing. Fiction, non-fiction original or fanfiction.

They assign a local organiser who arranges meetings in your area. There were over four thousands participants registered where I am, for example. I think if you wanted encouragement and you needed to know other people were writing with you, it’d be perfect. I am one of those truly annoying people who can say, ‘I write that many words every day’.

I discussed it with a couple of people but left it very late to look at in any detail. One issue for me is that it has to be an unwritten idea. You can have done all your preparation, plotted out your storyline and designed your characters but you are not supposed to have started writing it. I have half a dozen story lines sketched out, but none that I haven’t actually started writing on.

Listen to me, I am so rule bound! It would never occur to me to cheat. Lol

Also I really do need to finish some other stuff. After distracting myself with some happy, smutty, fluffy one shots Wide open Road, and an attempt at a children’s story The great flood, I am diving back into the angstfest that is Swan’s. I said it would be worse than Hurt. It certainly is bigger! Over one hundred thousand words and, I suspect, maybe half way.