Current Projects

My current To-Do list is the same as my previous To Do list, which isn't great, but I am at least making some progress.

A quick run down:

• Fairy Story
• Doctor Who Fic
• porting things over to Wordpress
• Fiction as a controlled substance
• SciFi noir story

But also, an idea occurred to me.

I'm spending a little time each week talking about, reading and voting on stuff that happens at The Writers Arena.

Why?  Simple.  The thing that writers need, that they need over and above everything else, is an audience.  We need readers, and it's not easy to get them.  The other writers who appear on that site are contributing to the creation of a community, drawing in readers to see the work of struggling amateurs.  That's worthwhile doing.  It's an all win proposition for readers: you get new stories each week, each one easily got through in a lunchtime at work, and you get to leave feedback, and you get to make a writer feel better about his efforts.

So go, read, vote.

I've contributed once, and hope to do so again.  

It's not an easy thing, writing for that competition.  Ten days to do four thousand words on a prompt that you don't select yourself (well, around 4k words anyway) is a tough gig, and that - from my point of view - makes every story that gets written a bit of a triumph.  Think about it like this: given the time constraints and the deadline, what you're seeing is a second or third draft.  It's possible the writers could polish more, but you get what you get.  It's pretty close to a live gig with writers.

I've decided to practice.  I'm going to go back through their previous prompts and produce my take on each one, which I'll park over on Wordpress if the result is any good.  I need the practice, I like the prompts and it'll push me to work more in long form because as fun as Reddit writing prompts are, they're flash fiction really.

And we'll see how I do.