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Anyone not submit? or nearly not?

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stevieh View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote stevieh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Anyone not submit? or nearly not?
    Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 7:15am
hello,
Anyone else in the same boat as me? (Flash fiction)
I submitted but I may have well not bothered. I had so much going on this weekend that I just didn't have the time. 
I couldn't generate an idea I could execute in the word limit and ended up just going with what I had. which is little more than a first draft with absolutely terrible pacing.
I submitted last minutes just to get use of the feedback from the judges, knowing completely that i've given my teammates a leg up in this heat LOLCry
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kata Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 8:22am
I am with you on that.  It was difficult to squeeze in between everything else going on, but that was also part of the fun.  Just do it, right.  I danced around ideas because the genre was something I was unfamiliar with as much as anything but then just went with one of concepts.  I want feedback and work on my craft as much as anything.  When school year starts I have even less time for my work...so I decided to put no pressure on myself in my typical "perfectionist" mentality and just create and see where it goes.  Good luck!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Sparker Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 9:18am
I assume there are probably very few amongst us for whom this was not painful in some way or another. 

Run your own race. 
Enjoy the process. 
Finishing is winning. 
Join the after party (here).
We will all celebrate your achievements and that you’ve left room for the next person to shine. 



Edited by Sparker - 16 Jul 2021 at 9:18am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Iressa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 10:12am
Originally posted by Sparker Sparker wrote:

I assume there are probably very few amongst us for whom this was not painful in some way or another. 

Run your own race. 
Enjoy the process. 
Finishing is winning. 
Join the after party (here).
We will all celebrate your achievements and that you’ve left room for the next person to shine. 


Sound advice and well put.  

I  wrote this last round in stolen hours or minutes that were still interrupted multiple times by different forms of chaos.  Lol. But I love that the nature of this comp pushes me to sharpen my focus and make better use of what time I have.  Feels like a writers’ boot camp.  Of course, I feel for those with even more difficult situations. 

When I start to think of what I left out or could have done better (and I do!), I try to remind myself that,  based on the timeline we write in, these are still pretty much versions of rough drafts that haven’t  gone through the important step of distance and time away before a final revision.  And I think the more we do and challenge ourselves, the more opportunity we have to improve our “timed” skills.   

Congrats to all who managed to submit anything, and I hope things work out better next time for those who weren’t able to this time. 





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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Dreamfired Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 10:31am
I nearly quit about 10 hours in (prompts landed at 5am uk time and I wake early). 

I had a lovely time mapping out the different possibilities that occurred to me for location and object, reading chunks of some spy writing and asking myself questions about what period setting I was comfortable with (I have some self imposed boundaries around giving depth of research time way beyond 48 hours if writing about periods other people have lived through and been affected by if most of the generation are still alive) and then discovering string trimmers are about the same age as me, so period choice limited unless I wanted time travel. And then thinking about how I made the writing chime with my moral/ethical compass but still stay in genre.  I loved all that.

But then none of my choices would talk to each other and make a narrative arc.   So so close to quitting. And it would have been full on sulky hide under duvet and do nothing else but eat cookies tantrum quit.

Instead I watched two episodes of The Night Manager that I'd never seen before and managed to get going after that.  First draft took 42 minutes once I stopped beating myself up about whether I could make it work!
  
Second draft tightened it up a bit.  Its not great but it is done. And I'm practicing enjoying that!  



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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BethanyDawn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 10:47am
Every single year without fail I have reached a round that I wasn't able to submit a FF story. My first year it was the third round, my second year the second round. The nice thing with FF is that you're guaranteed two rounds so even if you aren't feeling great about this one you still have September!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote hcw522 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 11:30am
I thought I wouldn't! Managed to sit down and get something written and sent in but I'd had such an awful week that I was already feeling demoralised.

Then I went to the shops on the Saturday morning, all ready to start writing after I came back, and a man started screaming at me in the car park for accidentally littering (a receipt fell out of my pocket and I didn't notice) and that was just the cherry on top of a terrible week. It really spooked and upset me. I mean Jesus man, just tap me on the shoulder and say hey I think you dropped something, why scream at a total stranger like that??

Anyway lol really threw me off and I was worried I wouldn't be able to get anything done but I managed to pull it off.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (4) Thanks(4)   Quote nod1v1ng Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 7:45pm
I was travelling out of state for my cousin's funeral. He passed away at the ripe old age of 34. Our families are close, and I used to babysit him back in the day, so needless to say I was a train wreck all weekend. I also had 2 other contest deadlines. I was a heartbeat and a whisper away from saying F it and not submitting. 

But the guest bedroom at my parents' house has a bed that is clearly made of rock, so I stayed up on Saturday night (after a whole bunch of wine) and spent an hour pushing out a story. I literally sat down, started writing, didn't bother to reread, had no beta, and submitted just to submit something. Woke up with a headache and a stiff neck and a whole lot of regret that there would be no chance to revisit it.

BUT the kind forumites have said some positive things about my hot mess story and have made me feel encouraged. (And THIS is the thing I love so much about this community.) Personally, I am not happy with the story at all (I'm stuck on the flaws), but I really appreciate that others are finding things to admire in it. 

Moral of the story - sub the thing no matter what. Your perfectionist tendencies be damned. 


Edited by nod1v1ng - 16 Jul 2021 at 8:27pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote stephenmatlock Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 9:52pm
I almost didn't. I have not submitted anything for about a year, even though I've paid to be a contestant.

And this year I had a required chore of much heavy labor that started Friday afternoon and that had to be completed before Sunday ended--right in the middle of my writing time.

I was genuinely exhausted when I snatched time away to write, and so tired I had trouble eating, but I managed to squeeze some writing and editing in (maybe three hours total) before I submitted. I know that I just sat in my office chair for almost an hour staring at my screen trying to come up with a title and synopsis, but I was just so tired my mind was seized.

Missed a key element of my story when I submitted, and of course the "spirit of the staircase" reminded me later of what I'd skipped. But I did the best I could, and I have a story that I can flesh out after the contest.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote NERdling Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jul 2021 at 10:19pm
Originally posted by nod1v1ng nod1v1ng wrote:

I was travelling out of state for my cousin's funeral. He passed away at the ripe old age of 34. Our families are close, and I used to babysit him back in the day, so needless to say I was a train wreck all weekend. I also had 2 other contest deadlines. I was a heartbeat and a whisper away from saying F it and not submitting. 


I'm so sorry for your loss. I had a cousin pass a few years back at a similar age and I full on zombied on my couch and did nothing but watch Hell's Kitchen for a week so my brain didn't have to do any heavy lifting while I processed. I hope the small amount of time you were able to put toward this helped to escape a little bit, even if it was only for an hour. 
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