November has been a busy month!

My last blog post about how you could never make a good story out of the one-hit-wonder “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone became a bit of a personal challenge. I sat down and tried to figure out who Jenny was. The answer surprised me, so I wrote it down. It ended up being a 1,500-word short story that exactly fit the writer’s digest short story contest criteria. I did remove any song lyrics included in the story. That could be a big old whoopsie and get me sued.

The first prize is 3000 bones and the chance to speed date agents at the next Writer’s Digest convention. This is my first time submitting a short story, though, so I don’t expect to win. Still, I fell in love with the piece. If it doesn’t place and it comes back to me, I’ll publish it here. Jenny deserves it.

Besides all the work I’ve been doing on my main novel, it’s NaNoWriMo — the month where a website encourages you to write a 50,000-word rough draft. Peter Clines posted an excellent blog post on it recently.

I ended halfway through the month with a 30,000 word Novella, which I think is pretty good. “But where’re the other 20,000 words?” says the judgmental voice in my head. I’ll have to think about whether the dopamine hit of earning badges and imaginary internet points is worth trying to flesh out the story. I like it; I think it’s as long as it needs to be. Sometimes you need to sit on stuff. Maybe it’s not healthy to try to write 2600 words a day. The book might not be good if you’re constantly squeezing blood from a stone, but what do I know?

“Quitter!” says the judgmental voice. I’ll have to soothe it with nachos or something. “Ooh, Nachos!”