Back in June, the 21st, to be precise, I received an email from one of my alma maters announcing a writing contest. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’ve been trying to dip my toes in the pool of fiction writing, so I’m considering it.
It’s the first week of August, and I’ve written an idea for the short story contest, and that’s about it. Well, that’s not totally true; I’ve also emailed myself some ideas on how to tell a captivating story in 2500 words. I went from struggling to write articles that were 2500 words to now wondering how I’ll tell a good story in such few words.
Because I haven’t tried my hand at fiction writing since I was in elementary school, I’m not confident I can do it. The doubts are what have me in the trap of procrastination. I wasn’t sure what I would write about this week, and then something told me to look at the deadline for the contest. The deadline to submit is 11:59 pm on September 5th.
Now that I’ve been writing articles averaging 1200 words regularly, I think that once I have a solid outline done, it should take too long to pull the story together. The problem is I need to get out of my head and simply get started. Even if I don’t win, it will be a fantastic experience and give me some ideas on how to put together the fiction novel I want to write.
Being in a setting where I can write without distractions isn’t the problem. We have more space here than we did in our condo, and it’s mostly quiet, with the occasional group of dogs or goats or our bull neighbor letting their presence be known.
My first attempt at fiction doesn’t have to win awards; it just needs to get done to prove to myself it is possible. When I was writing my first book, it was based on a personal experience, so the content wasn’t the issue. The problem was deciding how much of my story needed to be shared.
Writing fiction should be easier since I don’t have to worry about protecting anyone’s feelings 😉 I get to make stuff up as I go along, and no one can tell me that I got the story wrong. I know I need to shift my perspective on writing fiction and see it as something I can have fun with. ❤️