Bloggishness

Phase Shift

The 15 for 15 contest is over and I am now in the process of trying to fill my mind with something other than story ideas.

My two favorite contests are the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge and the 15 for 15 contest. Both result in a story of about 300 words resulting from a prompt. However, there is a very big difference.

The DFF posts a prompt and you have to post your story within 24 hours. However, you can spend as much time writing and rewriting the as you wish. This being the case, my approach is to often write the first line or even the first 200 words without knowing where the story was going. I can do this right off the top of my head. if I find myself going nowhere, I can start over. Typically, it takes me about 30 minutes from start to finish, including rewrites. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

In the 15 for 15, you have to post your story within 24 hours of the prompts, just like DFF. However, you are to spend no more than 15 minutes total, writing. There is no limit to "thinking" time. What this means is (1) you have to get the story right the very first time since there is no time to rework it and (2) Thinking time can take up an entire day as I fret over one story line or the other.

So, the 15 for 15 is a much bigger part of may day, even though I spend half the time writing as I do with the DFF.

Now, I am editing my NaNoWriMo story - Seedlings. Hopefully it will grow from 50,000 words to about 120,000. Having finished the Prologue and Chapter One, it does seem to be growing. It's weird to write when there is no word limit. I have to be careful though. The good thing about word limits is that you can't afford to get boring or slow.

Finally, I love the fact that there are better people in the world than me. Those that give of their time on this site to run contests and help others...I just don't know how they do it. But I'm glad they are here, amongst us.

j