Ah, the heady, glorious days of 2016, when I was submitting stories everywhere (well, a LOT of stories at least) and gathering rejections like ripe fruit.
2017 saw my focus shift, by matter of necessity, to longer pieces that were pushed out (and rejected) less frequently. I was always more comfortable in long form anyway (I struggle to say in 100 words what can be said in 1,000), but I do miss writing buckets of shorter works. Partially because I miss writing (I mean, I still write, but I average about 2-4k words a week, and in 2016 I would do that in a morning), but also because it's nice to exercise different muscles sometimes.
This particular short story is basically fanfic for a particular game I play, hosted by a podcast that is by no means a "legit" writing contest, but I had fun with it. I'm planning to do another in July (the contest ends August 1st, and multiple submissions are allowed, but I don't want to inundate them with stories and would rather craft a couple really good ones rather than crank out a dozen).
In the parallel, I'm also submitting a model I'm painting for their painting contest, not because I have the faintest hope of winning (I don't), but because I'm really looking forward to the feedback I'll get to improve my craft. The painting contest is done by a couple professional painters that work with the podcast, and they've said they'll give feedback on the entries. So that'll be nice. I took my "before" pictures today, and hopefully in a week or two I can be mostly finished an then work on some final details.
So a busy week. Long weekend this week too, which is awful nice... but for now, back to Novel 4!