I am on cloud 9! I have just received an email from Black Hare Press. They have accepted one of my stories for their new anthology. Dark Drabbles #6 – Apocalypse. For those who may not know, a drabble is a story of exactly 100 words, no more, no less. It’s certainly a challenge to pack an entire story in only 100 words, but very fun to try.

The book is scheduled to be released November 19th, 2019 and my story is called Mother Earth.

Thank you to all my family and friends for your encouragement and support.

I made a new submission today and as per usual I teared up when I received the confirmation email. I’m not sure why I do this but it’s happened every time.

Today’s was a submission to the NYC Midnight 11th annual Flash Fiction Contest. This one is a little different. There are thousands of competitors but what is really nice about this one is that for each round the judges will give you useful feedback on your story.

There are four rounds and everyone will compete in at least two. Your points earned will determine whether or not you advance.

You are given a genre, a place and an object and a maximum 1,000 words. Mine was fairy tale, a retirement home and a bale of hay.

I think I came up with a good, solid story but am now second guessing myself as to if it truly fits the genre.

Oh well. It’s out there. All I can do is wait for the feedback and learn.

I had a headache when I got home so I took a couple of Advil and lied down. I couldn’t sleep but wanted to rest anyway so I started building a story in my head. I had it completely written in my mind and I got up and went downstairs to write it in Word. First thing I did was check my email. I had a prompt for a contest I’ve entered at the Australian Writer’s Center for their Flash Fiction contest. They give you three points that must be in your story, a 500 word limit and 55 hours to get it in. I bet you can guess what happened! The story I had written in my head fit the requirements perfectly! I sat down, wrote it out and went over it at least 20 times for corrections to spelling, grammar and tweaks to the plot. Bottom line, within two hours of opening that email I had submitted my story for the July contest! Is that kismet or what?

Writing wise I had a stellar weekend. I wrote my next 4 Medium posts (I plan on publishing 2 a week), started another and even created a draft story for submission to an open call. Whoo Hoo!

Unfortunately everything seems to come at a price. I’ve been laid low with a migraine the last 3 days due to the rain we got on Monday.

Oh well, good with the bad.

This evening I have managed to feel a bit better. Still dizzy and I still have an incredibly sore back, but I’m at least mobile.

I just posted my latest story to Medium and I polished that story draft and I’ve sent it off. Now off to dinner and an early bedtime!

I’ve submitted two new posts this week on Medium. One is a short story that is a bit dystopian and the other is a true story about childhood misadventure.

I’ve been toying with this idea for a while now and today I finally took the plunge.

It satisfies two different objectives. It is an outlet for my personal story as someone growing up with a disability. It also is an opportunity to have my writing make me some money.

There is an online blog/magazine called Medium. It is a place where all kinds of writers share their stories. It is full of fiction, non fiction and everything in between on all matter of subjects. A person can read stories for free and there is also a paid service that allows you access to all of it’s content. As a writer, I get paid by having paying customers read my work and “clap” for it if they like it.

It’s scary and exciting all at the same time!

Here is the post: https://medium.com/@michelleanderson_27221/life-with-a-dis-ability-d09b1f5014ef

This has been an interesting journey so far. The classes were great and I plan on taking more in the Fall, even if this this Summer is a nice break. I’ve met some incredible people through Facebook from all over the world. Writers are generally an incredibly supportive group. I think we need that. We’re vulnerable. We do what we love and put it out there which is very scary.

Three things happened this week that make me feel like a real, honest to goodness writer.

I did a story exchange with someone from Facebook and we critiqued each others’ story and gave each other some much needed feedback.

I entered a head to head contest in one of my Facebook groups. There are almost a hundred of us in it and we’ve been split up into groups. We are given a prompt and a max word count…this week is REGRET and a max of 300 words. I wrote it in less than twenty minutes. I love this type of challenge. The idea behind the groups is that we are there to critique and support each other before we submit our story for the competition. It’s been a blast chatting with other writers about our chosen craft. I’ll post my story and the results once this week’s submissions are done.

The most recent thing that happened is that I was talking with a couple of co-workers and I don’t know how we got on the topic, but I did mention I was a writer in my spare time. One of my co-workers said that his daughter had written a book and would like to publish but didn’t know where to start. I spent an hour yesterday going through my notes and gathering some information to email to him. Sharing the knowledge I’ve gained over the past 6 months made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

I’d love to do more but work and my commute really get in my way. 🙂 I still have hope though…someone has to win the lotteries!