101 words

Time for some good news. I've had a (very) short story accepted for publication by 101words.org

I've mentioned before that I've been focussing on writing drabbles recently. These are 100 word stories, that I find challenging but fun to write. I visit them everyday, and tinker around (add a word here, cut a word there), and I find this a really good way for me to keep writing when I'm not really in the right place to focus on my main work in progress.

Earlier this year I had a drabble finished and polished, and I sent it out to a website that was running a competition, I was so pleased with myself for actually sending it out, and literally the day after I sent it the site crashed. It completely disappeared from the internet, and has never returned. Sigh. I took that as a sign that maybe the story wasn't great, I mean, it literally blew up a website. So I filed that story and started another, and found another site that accepted submissions. This one is the above mentioned 101words.org and as you may have guessed from the name, submitted stories are allowed to contain 101 words.

This new story, Myrtus Communis, was written a few months ago, and I've been rather holding off on sending it out, given what happened last time I tried this, but I finally hit 'send' and sat back to wait. The site didn't crash. And a few weeks later I got a reply telling me that they'd be happy to accept, and publish my story. I'm thrilled. And I'm especially pleased that it was accepted 'as is' without the need for editing. They also gave me some great feedback too, and this has been such a boost to my confidence. These things make such a difference, in a system where we seem to spend a lot of time, effort, and energy shouting into the void.

My story is scheduled to appear on their website on, or around, Nov 7th, and be emailed out to subscribers of their Flash Fiction Daily newsletter on the same date.