6-Month Anniversary

So today is my 6-month anniversary of starting this blog. I started in October and it is April now. So far, I have 5 "followers", 23 published comments, and 1,923 pageviews. I expect that, by the end of the year, I will look back on these numbers at laugh at their smallness. But, for now, I am happy.
It seems like an anniversary is a good time to celebrate. And, since this is a writing blog, I decided to celebrate with a short story challenge. Short stories are great opportunities for honing your skills, and, if you are buried in a much longer project, they can be a welcome break. Give this a try! For those of you who like a prompt, you can start the story with the words:

"He never knew..."

See what you can come up with! It should be fun to see what everybody writes. Once you write your story, you can post it on your own blog and then paste the link to it in the comments section below. I can hardly wait to read it.

There is more information about this in an earlier post. You can see that here .

And, if you are just here to read, please check out the comments below for links to other writers' blogs with their own short stories posted. Have fun!

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Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning. I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that. And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send." Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story. And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it. I wrote them. And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....

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Rooglewood Countdown: 12 days

For the next 12 1/2 days, as we do our final countdown until March 31st, I'm going to do 4 posts asking about something you would like to see in the Snow White collection. There are so many ways all of us, writers and readers alike, can win in this contest. Maybe a familiar name makes it into the final five -- hurray! Maybe a story in your favorite genre ended up in the collection this year -- woohoo! Maybe you finally get to read a winning story about an evil king and his Snow White son -- how awesome! So, in celebration of all the many things we can root for, I want to know some of the things that you think would be cool to find in this year's set of winners. Without further ado, here is my question for the day: What is a point of view you would like to see in this collection? Would you like a story written from the prince's perspective? A story from Snow White's p...

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