The short story I am writing was inspired by an early morning holiday walk by this canal. It was our first, and so far only, trip with both son and daughter and son’s wife. It is so hard to organise grown up children with only limited holiday to do a family holiday when they also want to do their own thing with their own friends and the other family! But that’s another tale.
Anyway this walk led to thinking about a stalker, about being stalked and not knowing about it, of one side feeling safe and not knowing they are prey. Anyway the story finially got written and I decided to send it to a competition. The minimum word count was 2200 words and I was told at one writing workshop many years ago to always try to write as close to the work count as possible. Of all this many workshops I have atteneded this was a thing that stuck.
So here was this stalker story at about 2000 words so I edited it, then reworked it, then out dog walking I got an amazing idea for the middle. Well now I am at 2540 words. I know there is often talk of “getting rid of one’s darlings” - another thing that has stuck from a workshop. Though I think that was because I have heard that at many workshops. But to get rid of 340 darling words?? Really???
I’ve done, as again I’ve heard many times before, and put the writing to one side to “sleep on it”. I’m entering a busy few days and am not sure whether I will reach the deadline for the competition or not and have felt myself start to panic. And this is where the exciting part comes from. I did my breathing and focusing and other centreing techniques. I was then able to say to myself that it doesn’t matter if I get this finished or not in time. Yes it would be nice to but I am not going to knock myself out about it.
If this is a good story then there will be other competitions that will fit the criteria and the word count. I might even send it to some magazines and see what happens. But for now I am not worrying. I will do what I can within the time I have available and if the word count stays over 2200 then I will trust that it is for something else.
I spend much of my life trusting in God/The Universe but it looks like I need to roll this into my writing life too.