12 Short Stories Challenge

Winter isn’t a very good season for me. I used to love it, but in recent years it’s meant exhaustion and sickness (I blame my working from home for the weakness of my immune system). I sat down yesterday to write a post while wishing I was napping with the rest of the family. I ended up writing a discouraging post about hope. Or was is a hopeful post about discouragement? It’s good for my mental health whine once in a while, so long as it allows me to move on. I’ll never post it, but it did help me regain some fortitude.

I was ready to write something better.

However, I didn’t feel like taking on the rewriting of my novel. I’m too tired and too busy for such a long project. I wanted to write short stories, but not one per week; it wouldn’t have been realistic in my current situation. That’s when somebody from my writing community brought 12 Short Stories to my attention. The goal is to write one short story per month, based on the given prompt and word count. Then you post it on the deadline and read and comment on 4 other stories.

It sounds doable.

I like that it’s not completely open: you get to share stories with a restricted audience composed of other writers and receive feedback. You get to never publish it publicly if you don’t want to, or to revise your piece using the feedback received before you do.

So I’ll try that. The January story is due on the 24th though – in two days – so I’ll start next month. Who’s with me?