Short Stories: A Lot of Words
Several years ago I had a document where I copied most of my short stories over from various Flash Fiction challenges. Unfortunately I got out of the habit when I slowed down on the flash front along with many of the disappearing challenges. I decided to update the document and import it into Scrivener so it can be imported on to my Kindle and have an active contents page.
I had to import the more recent stuff like stories from the #MidWeekFlash and #SeedlingChallenge. None of these had been saved in the original document. There's still about sixty stories from the latter to copy over. But even without them just these added up to 20,000 words. By the time I copy the remaining Seedling Challenges over the whole record of the flash stories will amount to something like 130k words. That is a lot of words for tiny fictions. It goes to show it all adds up. And thats the same for your latest novel: just keep adding bits and you'll get there.
Contents page for the amended Scrivener document
It is amazing how many of the challenges have been and gone, some of them are like friends I've forgotten about. I know too there will be loads of stories I've missed from not keeping up with this originally. But I guess I've got the bulk of them, which is nice both as a record and a compendium of ideas. I'm sure most of you writing guys are more methodical and better at keeping a good record than me, but if not then I recommend putting all your short stories in one place. You never know what you may find in there.
One thing I couldn't believe when copying the Seedling Challenges over was how recently the challenge stopped: and I stopped it! In my head it was well over a year ago not bloody August. This pandemic year has done some masterly work fucking up how time flows.
I had to import the more recent stuff like stories from the #MidWeekFlash and #SeedlingChallenge. None of these had been saved in the original document. There's still about sixty stories from the latter to copy over. But even without them just these added up to 20,000 words. By the time I copy the remaining Seedling Challenges over the whole record of the flash stories will amount to something like 130k words. That is a lot of words for tiny fictions. It goes to show it all adds up. And thats the same for your latest novel: just keep adding bits and you'll get there.
Contents page for the amended Scrivener document
It is amazing how many of the challenges have been and gone, some of them are like friends I've forgotten about. I know too there will be loads of stories I've missed from not keeping up with this originally. But I guess I've got the bulk of them, which is nice both as a record and a compendium of ideas. I'm sure most of you writing guys are more methodical and better at keeping a good record than me, but if not then I recommend putting all your short stories in one place. You never know what you may find in there.
One thing I couldn't believe when copying the Seedling Challenges over was how recently the challenge stopped: and I stopped it! In my head it was well over a year ago not bloody August. This pandemic year has done some masterly work fucking up how time flows.
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