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Whoa creation happened
Oct. 16th, 2019 10:34 pmA couple of days ago I submitted a short story to a fiction contest. This all started when I wrote something on a lark, showed it to Eien and he responded with "You know, you could try submitting this somewhere." Shortly after I went, "Yeah...yeah! Why not? DAMN THE TORPEDOES" and started doing revisions, I learned about this fiction contest. And so a few drafts and betas later, here I am, having submitted the first original story I've written in a long while that I could consider sufficiently 'done', and not sitting in a state of half-formed or Extremely First Draft.
I was a mix of emotions dropping it off. I was kind of doing a Rapunzel-like cycle of "YES I did it!--OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE--well, maybe it's not so bad--THEY'RE GONNA HAAAAATE IT I'VE EMBARRASSED MYSELF--But some of what I wrote I'm really proud of--" etc etc etc
I know realistically the chance of winning is pretty small. Competition aside I have a feeling that the judges won't care much for some of the more unorthodox parts of my writing (It has chat log snippets, which I think really add to the story, so if they don't like it then oh well because I really like them). However I am rather proud of the fact that I actually finished something and attempted to DO something with it other than just sit on it. And I can always try revising and submitting it to something else down the road if nothing comes of this. And it's pretty invigorating to point at it and go "YEAH. THAT THING? I WROTE THAT." It gives me motivation to maybe try and write some more of the things I have knocking around in my head. Lately I've been having the sense that I should stop putting off some of the things that are on my "someday" list and just start DOING things, because there's going to eventually be a point where there are no more "somedays". It's not always easy - I don't get a lot of free time these days - but I'm trying.
I was a mix of emotions dropping it off. I was kind of doing a Rapunzel-like cycle of "YES I did it!--OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE--well, maybe it's not so bad--THEY'RE GONNA HAAAAATE IT I'VE EMBARRASSED MYSELF--But some of what I wrote I'm really proud of--" etc etc etc
I know realistically the chance of winning is pretty small. Competition aside I have a feeling that the judges won't care much for some of the more unorthodox parts of my writing (It has chat log snippets, which I think really add to the story, so if they don't like it then oh well because I really like them). However I am rather proud of the fact that I actually finished something and attempted to DO something with it other than just sit on it. And I can always try revising and submitting it to something else down the road if nothing comes of this. And it's pretty invigorating to point at it and go "YEAH. THAT THING? I WROTE THAT." It gives me motivation to maybe try and write some more of the things I have knocking around in my head. Lately I've been having the sense that I should stop putting off some of the things that are on my "someday" list and just start DOING things, because there's going to eventually be a point where there are no more "somedays". It's not always easy - I don't get a lot of free time these days - but I'm trying.