I had high hopes for 2023 and mapped out writing challenges that I wanted to participate in. January was the NYC Midnight short story challenge, which I signed up/paid for, waited until the day before the due date, fell asleep before finishing the story and then submitted it at 11:59 PM. I went to sleep relieved and woke up in a panic. Did I actually hit submit or was it all a dream? After feverishly checking every tab in Gmail and searching NYC Midnight. I didn’t get a confirmation email. I couldn’t believe it.

Fast forward to a week later… I received the confirmation email from NYC Midnight. Now I was in a real panic thinking about the story that I had written in a panic. A story that I never went back to read, an unedited story. A story that I now cannot find in any of my files. Probably for the best.

Did I learn my lesson on that day? Probably not. I’m a procrastinator and usually thrive as a deadline approached. I was the kid working on their book report the night before it was due and I would usually get an A. That’s not a brag, it’s just how my brain works. I’m a writer and writer’s are good at bullshitting… usually. Now to wait for the results to be published. I don’t have high hopes, but at least I rose to the challenge and submitted it before it was due.

28 Plays Later

Now onto challenge number two for 2023. ’28 Plays Later’ which is put on by The Literal Challenge. This was my fourth year partaking in this challenge and I thought I was ready. I was excited to challenge myself and write 28 new scripts before February came to an end. I was ready to write… or so I told myself. My brain had other ideas and on the morning of February 1st I woke up at 4:30 a.m., poured myself a cuppa, and sat down at my laptop.

My plan was to start with a monologue, the brief was about ‘time’ and since I was always running against time when it came to writing challenges I thought, ‘This is going to be a piece of cake.’ Ha! Not a piece of cake… the writing came easy and fast. I was almost finished and stepped away for just a moment to get a little more coffee and when I came back it was all gone. Celtx had gone rogue. Everything I had written had vanished.

This wasn’t the first time the script writing software had failed me. I still have nightmares after my script titled, ‘Bicycle Race’ vanished. All thirty pages. It was for a full length screenplay writing challenge. It was one of my favourite scripts I had ever written and this was funny because it was a musical. I hate writing musicals. It was set to the Queen song, ‘Bicycle Race’ and I used every single element from the song to create a glorious film. I must have listened to the song thirty times while writing that script. Alas.

28 Plays Later was a flop..

Although I did write everyday, and most importantly I completed and followed the ‘rules’ brief to a T. Not sure why my motivation was lacking. I am almost certain that it was due to the fact that even if you didn’t submit the script on time, you still won. Or did you? Was that the challenge in the challenge? Holding oneself accountable? I certainly know that I didn’t win 28 Plays Later, but I did win by writing everyday.

What’s Next?

March’s focus will be all things Del Plazo: Volume II. Almost all of the fairy tales have been written and stories for year one are trickling in. I’ve completed the prologue and have begun the building process. I have to write my stories for year one, which has been a challenge, but that’s not new. Writing is always a challenge even when writing about anything, everything and nothing at all.

Dreamwalker is still coming soon. It’s such a big project and it’s very personal as many of the things that take place are from my life. And no, it’s not a memoir. I think most authors take things that have happened to them at some point in their lives and turn those experiences into stories. We take a piece of reality and weave it into an amazing story or sometimes it gets chaotically woven into a story filled with horror and death.

There you have it. A page filled with my morning musings. If you’ve read this far and somewhat enjoyed my thoughts then please give me a follow by subscribing to my blog and a share. Any feedback is also appreciated. Oh, and if you are interested in purchasing my novels you can find all of them here

Have an amazing day my friends and thank you for reading 🙂