A quick update… I found out first thing this morning that I was one of the winners of the TL;DR 1,000 Word Herd Flash Fiction 2024 Competition from April! Here is the official announcement. Great way to start my day, and the contract has been signed and sent back. Woo Hoo!
I have heard good things about the TL;DR press from my writing community. First of all, they provide good feedback on the stories, no matter if they win or not. That was the main reason I submitted. Second, they are a charity organization and all the proceeds from this competition will support Trans Lifeline, a hotline and micro-grant organization to support the trans community.
When I was in high school, my creative writing teacher would have us open a dictionary randomly, find a word or two, and then write a story about it. 30 years ago, this was a method I continued using to spark my creativity, but as I have gotten older, I have struggled more with writing to prompts. Thus, I was a bit worried about completing this task. You are given two prompts (mine were “Intelligent AI,” and “the hole”) and you have 168 hours to write a flash story less than 1000 words. I got my prompts and had no idea what I was going to write. This story ended up being a real struggle for me, but with a few hours to go, I submitted the story back in April and hoped for the best.
The comments I received were enthusiastic and helpful. I won’t list all of it here, but both judges thought I used the prompts well. One judge said my piece “took a risk… (that) largely paid off.” I am quite happy with the rest of the comments, though they aren’t (probably) generally useful beyond this story, or flash in general.
I’ll close with a novel update. I have had a bit of a slump but I am coming out of it. I am in the middle of the first major edit pass, and I still am hoping to finish by the end of the summer so I can get it in the hands of some readers. During the academic year, when I have a lot less time, I will focus more on short fiction.