Feeling pretty good about my consistency, if not my product quite yet! I have been getting those flash stories out, managed to make the semi-finals in the NYC Midnight screenplay challenge, and wrote my third challenge screenplay (open genre, tugboat, xray machine). I tried a mystery this time, we’ll see if I caught the judges eyes. Only the top five in each group will go on to the finals.
Have submitted to four magazines so far since I started writing, gotten two rejections. It’s so hard to push the “send” button on those! I keep tweaking and tweaking, thinking maybe if the story is a little more x or a little more y it might do better.
Hardest part for me? Thinking of the story. My stories tend to be a little flat – need better story arcs.
I’m thinking that I need to focus more on longer short stories now, that I need to take these flash stories and flesh them out a bit – or sit myself down and start by aiming for a longer story. The NYC Midnight Short Story contest will help too. So many of my target magazines are looking for 2500+ word count. Not 780!!
LEE HALLISON 