Thirty

I wrote and submitted my thirtieth short story of the year this evening. This time it's a 2,000-word bit of erotic crime fiction.

I had three anthology calls for submissions with deadlines of June 30 or July 1 and, after completing my previous story, I reread the guidelines for these three anthologies.

This afternoon I had an idea for an opening paragraph that could have led to a story for either of two of the anthologies. As I added a few more sentences, I realized it fit one anthology better than the other and then went full bore into writing the story.

According to the time stamp on my Word file, I started writing this at 5:54 p.m. and finished at 11:04 p.m., or about five hours from first word to last. That's a pathetic 400 words-per-hour, but if they're the right words and the editor buys the story I won't complain too much.

And, besides, I did other things, too, such as walking the dogs several times.