Twenty-nine

I just finished and submitted my twenty-ninth short story of the year. This one's a 1,400-word story involving magic.

I've had an anthology's open call for submissions in my binder for several months but had not had any appropriate story ideas for it. (I put anthology guidelines in my binder by deadline date, writing and submitting stories in deadline order or discarding guidelines if I don't make the deadlines.)

This anthology's guidelines reached the front of the binder earlier this week and I read them repeatedly, trying to force myself to have an idea. Nothing happened. Until yesterday.

Last evening, on my way home from spending Father's Day with Plot Monkey, the story title, story structure, and primary characters came to me. I couldn't get home fast enough, and I immediately keyed everything into a Word file.

But making notes isn't writing and the words didn't come right then.

I woke up this morning and the first two pages flowed out. Around mid-morning, after an interruption to work on other tasks, the next two pages flowed out. This evening, though the words didn't flow as easily as earlier in the day, I wrote the rest of the story, proofread it, and sent it off.