StoryADay, Day 3 - My First Drabble

Today's StoryADay challenge was to write a drabble. A drabble is a story of 100 words. This is what I ended up with for my first attempt. Your feedback would be appreciated:

When I Became

“First, there must always be magic,” she said. 

She glowed in concentration as she held my hand. Her power searched through me for whatever power of mine lay dormant. I hadn't believed when she told me I had something, but she'd since taught me trust. 

Then came the moment I became something else, something new. It was so distinct. It felt like both a tearing and an awakening. It was only then I realized I wasn't ready.

It terrified me.

She recoiled. So I was powerful, then.

Since I could, I rose into the air and decided to take everything.

StoryADay, Day 1

Tonight I started the StoryADay challenge. The challenge is to write a story every day for the month of May. Details can be found here.

The first challenge was to write a story in 30 minutes, about a character created with traits you like to read about. The story should explore the idea of something that character would never ever do, while putting them in a situation where they are faced with the choice of having to do that thing. All this must be accomplished in 30 minutes, no more.

I did it. I have a complete story that I'd say is a solid first draft. It may be one of the scariest things I've ever written. My character is one whose life is about taking care of kids. He's a Cub Scout Pack Leader, on a camping trip with his Pack. Things go horribly wrong and he has to make a terrible choice.

A couple of things I learned:

1. The StoryADay folks did a good job setting up a well-structured prompt. The time limit and the instructions on how to handle it were great.
2. A story can be written in 30 minutes.
3. I experimented with what I thought was Hemingway's suggestion to write drunk. As I researched to write this post, it looks like that quote might've been incorrectly attributed to him. In any event, a couple of whiskey shots followed by a nice glass of Frangelico shots seemed to do the trick for me. In fact, I'm writing this post while still slightly buzzed. Wheeee!!!

I'm glad this started on a weekend. Who knows if I'll be able to actually pull this off for 30 days straight, but we'll see. Right now, I'm stoked.

Short Story Marathon Training

I have a few friends that, for some ungodly reason, enjoy running. On purpose. Over and over again. When nothing's chasing them! Some even run marathons. I don't understand this.

I am not a runner. I am a writer. I write stuff. I read stuff about writing stuff. While reading stuff about writing stuff a few days ago, I ran across the Story A Day concept at http://storyaday.org/about/. Like NaNoWriMo (http://nanowrimo.org/), Story A Day is a monthlong writing challenge. The difference is that instead of writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November, the Story A Day challenge is to write a new story each day during the month of May. 

Since it seems my "thing" right now is short stories (see my book in Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00M8QQW9C?ie=UTF8&redirectFromSS=1&pc_redir=T1&noEncodingTag=1&fp=1), Story A Day is a marathon I can understand.

I'm thinking about trying it.

Of course, just like I hear is necessary for a real marathon, one should train for these things. I think I'll try a day or two over the next few weeks to write and finish a story or two. After that, maybe a long Story A Day weekend. Maybe after I do that a couple of times I might be able to take a crack at May.

The good news is that even if I don't finish a story every day, this challenge has the potential to start several stories. From there I can polish a plethora of work after the challenge. I see this as a great opportunity to plant the seeds for several stories. I like this idea very much.

I still don't understand why my friends  run.