Short Stories

I can’t believe that its March already – this year really does seem to be slipping through my fingers.

Despite that I had a reasonably productive month in February.  I carried on the 500 words per day writing challenge until well into the middle of the month, by which time I had four new short stories written, some of a longer length than I usually write. At this point I stopped writing any more as I decided that I needed to do something with them, so I typed them all up and plan to edit them this month.

I also edited a story I had written a while ago and sent it out to my writers’ group for a critique.  As usual they gave me some very constructive feedback and suggestions of things which didn’t quite work.  Some of them were things which had been niggling me, some which I hadn’t thought of but once they were mentioned, were glaringly obvious.  I mulled over how I could make changes to the story to make it better and today have re-edited and sent it out.  Fingers crossed it gets accepted.

It’s a story about a young teacher who takes a class of primary school pupils on an outwards bounds residential.  Rather fittingly today I waved off my youngest on a four day trip – the house is weirdly quiet without him and I’ve had to close his bedroom door tonight, because I can’t bear seeing it open when he is not there.  Even the toothbrush holder with one toothbrush missing is a poignant reminder that he is missing – but I digress, he’s probably having a ball and not missing me at all.

We are told to write about what we know, and although I’m not a teacher, I have been picking my kids brains to work out likely scenarios – they’ll probably want commission if the story does get accepted.  Let’s hope its good luck, sending it out on the day he went on his trip.

It might be a slow start to the year, but I feel like I'm getting back into the short story swing of things.

And now back to the editing.