It’s been a while since I visited the States, but today I got up real early, put on a mask and took car, train, plane, AirTrain, and the subway to get to the hotel where the SCBWI Regional Team is meeting this weekend. More than 14h later, I’ve finally arrived!
I am super excited to meet many new RTs and see some of those I met in 2020 at the Winter Conference again. So far, everything went smoothly. I can’t wait for the programming to start tomorrow.
Separating night from day isn’t dusk or dawn–
it’s a glint, a shimmer in the air,
the hues of a changing world,
the quality of light.
Cold shadows. Sunny brightness. And everything in-between.
It’s a competition of sorts
and Moon always loses.
All praise Sun,
higher, hotter, too bright to bear.
Her radiant smile comes in many colours.
Tangerine. Gold. Eclipsing white.
Her guys can’t help but show off.
Enter: fiery quadriga, blazing headpiece,
and some wicked lyre sound.
But Moon, my sweet, cold orb
is too modest
for such a flashy spectacle.
Nightingales carry her tune
shrouded in the grasping
mists of silver and grey and blue
—the serene triad of the dark hours.
Moon tries, time and again,
peeks out from behind her concealing shadow
a furtive glance
growing bolder, perkier, ever stronger
as she waxes and then
takes heart at last, exposing her full face,
for us, for a night.
All she illuminates is an unaware crowd
fast asleep but for a few restless souls,
searching, stumbling, lost.
Gutted, she turns away,
throws her veil back on,
pulling it ever tighter.
If I were Moon, I’d wane one last time,
then hide from us sun-dazzled creatures,
become a shadowy enigma,
a blind spot on an inky firmament,
and send out bitter dreams to the oblivious
in revenge for their neglect.
Would anyone miss the moonshadows?
Know the difference between
a star-dotted darkness and a cerulean ocean trench,
filled to the brim with the lures
of a billion deep-sea anglerfishes,
Would anyone know if they are gazing up
or falling down?
A few, a score, perhaps a thousand
would search for a glimpse of Moon’s hidden face,
eyes raking the dark velvet in vain,
finding only emptiness
staring back into their hearts.
To them, I’d sing a chilling song,
a whispered confession,
a plea for forgiveness
that fades away
leaving nothing but glazed eyes,
lunar-pale lips, and noses filled
with the smell of cold shadows.
Everyone yearns for Moon
when the time is right
when another year, another life,
another love flits past.
Everyone falls into the moonlight at one point.
A few days ago, I posted about the prompt for the 2nd round (3rd challenge) in this year’s NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge. Luckily, I – and with me 24 more writers in group 12 – got this:
Genre: Sci-fi
Location: a trawler
Object: a pigtail
TBH, that wasn’t the worst prompt – but not quite as accommodating as the 2nd challenge’s fantasy-prompt. It didn’t take that long to come up with a way to put a trawler in a Sci-fi setting that I liked – but the whole pigtail number had me thinking for a while.
But, as inferred in the headline: I made it!
I submitted my story in the early hours at 3:17 am, with less than 3 hours to go before the deadline ended.
Tired. Happy with the story. But a bit doubtful, too. I’m not sure if it is going to be good enough to score a place amidst the best three of the group. After all, the competition is bound to be harder this time. Those who got to write in challenge #3 all made the cut of the best 600.
Now, there’s not much to do but to wait, and hope the judges like my story. Midnight EST (NYC time) on Wednesday, Nov 9th (aka Thursday, Nov 10th, 6am in Germany) I’ll know if I get to write in the final round. I’ll let you all know.
Quick update: the remaining writers in the NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge got assigned into 25 groups. I’m now in group #12. And here’s my prompt:
I can’t believe I’m so lucky.
Now:
Plotting, writing, editing.
tick-tock, time is running.
Well, actually, I WON the 2nd challenge, and I am FIRST in my group! I am so SO happy. And proud. And, of course, now stressed about Round2 and the 3rd challenge this weekend.
I still can’t quite believe it! I made it and get to write in the next challenge.
But now, I’m AGAIN super worried I will get a weird genre this time. I’ve been lucky so far – while I had not written mystery before the 1st challenge – fantasy is quite my genre. Perhaps the one easiest for me.
(I mean, apparently so… 😉 )
I wonder if I’ll get lucky again.
A recap for those of you who don’t know what I am talking about:
In May 2022 I signed up for NYCMidnight’s Flash Fiction Challenge (see post)- a writing competition where participants get to write 1000 word flash fiction pieces on a prompt (genre, location and object). The first round, consisting of 2 challenges, is open to all participating writers. The best 15 stories in each group get awarded points. The cumulative points of both challenges determine if a participant will move on to the next round – the top 5 in each group get to advance to round 2.
And that now includes me. Because I came in second in my group in the 1st challenge – 14 points. And now, I WON! 15 points, baby! That brings me to a total of 29 (of a maximum possible 30) points – the best result in my group!
What happens next? Well, all the writers who placed in the top 5 – that’s 600 out of the original 4200+ participants in all the 120 groups of round 1 – will be assigned new groups. At 11:59PM EDT on Friday 7th Oct the new prompts will drop and everyone still in the game will scramble to get something worthwhile to paper in the 48h given to us.
The time translates to 6am for me. And once again, I’m, not at home, but on the road with my dear husband. That’s somewhat lucky, though. I’ll have a hotel room all for myself b/c he’ll be working.
So… fingers crossed I’ll wake up to a good prompt in about 2 days’ time! I’ll keep you all posted.
It’s a bliss to work on a flash fiction story while on holiday in Sweden. We’re staying at Thankfully, the LTE availability is superb even in remote areas. Right now, we’re at a camping ground in Glaskogen Nature Reserve. It’s beautiful, peaceful, relaxing – just right for a challenge with a tight deadline. This time, it wasn’t even necessary to write through the night! I submitted on Sunday, 14th of August, 11:30pm – with 6,5h deadline left… and got the confirmation email a few days later.
And now, AGAIN, waiting for the results! Isn’t that just the worst part of it all?
The assignment for the 2nd challenge in the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge dropped. And what can I say? It’s …
I kid you not! I got FANTASY as a genre – one of my favourite genres next to SciFi. Granted, the butcher shop is a bit out of the ordinary, but I’ll make it work somehow.
So, I better get going and start drafting a story. Tick Tock. 48 hours until deadline.
Results Round #1, Challenge #1
Progress on the WIP had been somewhat non-existent lately, while all the nice little side projects ate up all my writing time. A rather unsustainable situation for someone who really, desperately wants to finish_the_damn_1stdraft. So I had to make a decision about the continued participation in the NYC Flash Fiction Challenge (NYCM-FFC).
Do I just stop after the 1st round’s 1st challenge? Do I go on if I got points? If so, how many to still have a shot at round 2?
For clarification: about 4200 writers from all over the world participate in the NYCM-FFC. That’s 120 groups of about 35 each. Each group writes a 1000 word flash fiction using their unique prompt (genre, location, object). The best 15 stories earn points – 15 points for placing first, 14 for second place, 13 for third – you get the idea. After round 1 (consisting of two challenges; max 30 points possible), the best 5 in each group advance to round 2 and get to write on.
I got lucky with the prompt in my first challenge. You can read about it here. I wrote through the Sunday night and submitted around 5am. (Time zone shift of 6h compared to NCY)
And then, the waiting began.
The results came in late. Exactly 24h before the 2nd round’s prompt was due, actually. And I, on family holiday in Sweden as of now, had discussed the “prioritize your WIP!”-issue with Husband over the last few days. Decision: if I scored more than 5 points, I’ll be ready to write the 2nd challenge – provided the genre is somewhat manageable for me.
Well. Tomorrow I’ll be at least looking at the prompt. Because I came ion 2nd in my group. SECOND! 14 points, baby!
I have to say, I am somewhat proud right now. Let’s see what tomorrow’s prompt is.
From time to time, writing turns into a really frustrating experience. Nothing seems to happen. The ideas won’t come – or too many of them, and then I end up chasing all the plot bunnies and short fiction ideas while my WIP sits in a corner, sad and lonely. It’s hard to avoid this from happening – at least I have not yet found a strategy against it yet – so naturally, I embrace it!
Enter: all the challenges and competitions.
No, not ALL of them, but here and there, if I come across an interesting opportunity, I just give myself some slack and just roll with it. See where it gets me.
This time: the NYC Midnight Challenges. Yeah, plural. You read that right.
Check out the website here. I can’t remember when and where this came to my attention, probably Twitter or maybe Insta. The Short Story Challenge was under way at the time (still miffed I missed this!) but there was a Flash Fiction Challenge coming up – just what I needed! Something that will get my creativity flowing but won’t bog me down for weeks. Something with a tight deadline, a clear task, a limited amount of hours involved. There was going to be feedback! Terrific!
So, I signed up in late May, got my registration confirmation, and had to wait for the first of at least 2 challenges to start.
The assignment dropped – as specified – on 11:59 EDT, 6:00 in the morning for me. On a weekend I was visiting my sister whom I had promised to help sort through kid’s clothing, clear the overgrown garden and turn the compost. Perfect timing.
Not.
Anyway, I had been so afraid I’d get Romance or Political Satire as a genre, but I got lucky. I got this:
It was a ride! I ended up writing through the night and submitted with only an hour left. Forking 5am in the morning. It was nice to hear the birds coming to life and all that. And honestly, I suffered the consequences for a couple of day. I’m just not used to pulling all-nighters anymore. But, it’s over and done. I got the confirmation a couple of days later. Now we wait for the results.
I admit it: I sometimes struggle to prioritize my writing. There’s the house and the chores and the kids and the husband and the cats and the taxes and the business and… AND the writing. Too often I find myself tired at the end of a long day and not once did I pick up a pen or type something up. And I am furious about it.
So here’s an idea: I need to work on forming the habit of writing more regularly. Urgently! I know I can do it. Heck, there was a time when I got up at 4:45 just so I was ready to write at 5am – proud member of the #5amwritersclub on Twitter. But honest: I’ve not managed that kind of enthusiasm (and masochism) for a long while.
In Autumn 2019 I attended the SCBWI-BI (British Isles) conference in Winchester. I wrote about it here. And at this conference, I listened to Piers Torday‘s “Creating Characters to Care About” presentation. During this talk, Piers mentioned something called Morning Pages and his way of basically employing the well-known journaling method to pump out some prose. Not just in terms of writing something, but also in terms of learning to write no matter the mood of the day.
Of course, I had heard of journaling. Bullet journaling for chore and task tracking, journaling for working through tough times,…but I had never considered to just write unrelated pieces of prose, unconnected prose, a type of association game.
So I went through my stack of unused notebooks and picked just the right one for the job. LARGE! (It’s a DIN A4 size; does anyone outside of Germany even use the DIN norms?) Hard-over. Bound in black fabric. 500 pages. Hahaha. Optimism FTW. I had already written on the first few pages at some other point, but figured 480 pages will be good enough too. Here it is:
Now it’s the end of the January, and I am having the best time with this. No, I don’t manage to write every day. But it’s definitely more often than before. I’ve drafted two new short stories: 1) Aliens accused of terraforming earth need to defend themselves in front of an international Grand Jury and 2) a Sleeping Beauty Retelling.
I vary the methods from day to day. At some days, I pick up where I left the day before. That’s usually when I draft a short story and am immersed in the plot/story. Other days, I start with a random line – from a book (a bit like the Literary Taxidermy idea, or from my list of ‘this could be a good beginning/first sentence’. Some days I pick a random word. Or an idea/event/titbit I heard on the news and just let my imagination run free: what if…?
So far, I’m not disappointed. 🙂
Katja Rammer 