Challenges and Short Stories

I changed something up this week as far as my writing goes, and it has been good. I haven’t been competing in short story competitions lately, and I wanted to get back into them considering that I have twenty-plus just sitting on my computer. I decided that one day of the week, Tuesdays (which I just choose arbitrarily), will be the day that I look for various short story contests. I am also working on re-editing my short stories implementing “voice.”

Changing it up has helped with breaking the monotony of what I was doing. Re-editing The Mustard Prince is great, but working on other things has been helpful to me as well as it provides variety and a new challenge. Right now, I’m working on re-editing my short story, The Next Level, where a nerdy guy gets roped into going to a homecoming dance with a nerdy girl, and it parallels the online RPG that they both play. It was already quite comical, but I feel that I’m making it funnier now that I’m editing it with “voice.”

When I submitted short stories to competitions, I got third place once, and that’s it out of many competitions that I’ve participated in. I look back and see that I really didn’t put my best foot forward, and if I can recognize problems now with my short stories, then I’d imagine that judges can spot these problems as well. I’m actually looking forward to submitting my short stories out there after they’ve been re-edited. I don’t expect to place in all of these contests or anything, but at least I’ll know that I put out my best effort.