Writing on Wednesday – Short Story Time

Crazy times, everyone. I haven’t posted a writing update in a while. I’m happy to say it’s not from lack of writing. Let’s see… what have I been up to with the old word smithing?

I wrote a play!

First one since high school (and we don’t talk about how bad EVERYTHING I wrote back then was/is.) I’ve been wanting to write one for the last few years as I’ve been acting with a local community theatre. It’s a farce that takes place in the lobby of an apartment building where one elevator is broken and the other takes people to a random floor. Hilarity ensues. I wrote specifically with our stage and our troupe in mind. And as long as it’s good enough, hopefully we’ll see it on the actual stage.

I got a whole bunch more rejections

I’m so proud of Vicarious, and I think it’s the best book I’ve written yet, but  the query rejections keep rolling in. I had one agent request the full manuscript, which was the first time and really exciting, though that also did not work out. There are still plenty of agents left to query, but I’m putting the breaks on and changing my focus for a little while.

My change of focus

Short stories! I’m going to be putting most of my efforts into getting short stories published in literary magazines or into short story competitions. My hope and strategy is to get something to catch on somewhere so that when I do restart the querying process, I can tell agents that I’ve been published somewhere before and maybe even won a contest or two. Speaking of…

I’M ENTERING A CONTEST

I stumbled across this little gem of a contest from Writer’s Digest. Your Story is a quarterly contest with a quick 650 word yarn based on their story prompt, which is a photo. I’ve already got something cooked up for this one, and I think it’s pretty good. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can share it here because it might become ineligible. Rest assured, if anything happens, you’ll hear about it. And if it doesn’t, then I’ll be free to post the story.

That’s all for now, but I hope to have more updates in the weeks to come, hopefully with more exciting news as well!