Jan 03, 2025
To:otkrlj
Wow, thanks so much for powering through it like that. My notifications were on fire when I woke up this morning.
Part of me wonders if I'm just not cut out for this contest. By my count, there are a total of 88 days between the announcement and the deadline this time. If I were to go for 50k words, that would be 568 words a day, but I estimate I didn't have writing time at all for about half of the days, so iet's call it 1000 words a day.
Depending on who you ask, 1000 words/day is reasonable, but it's just not doable for me, especially not at the quality I want and not the way I agonize over every word. Due to the time constraints, this isn't the first draft, but it's still obviously not what I want from a final draft. I only hit 50k words in 2022 because I already had the book written and tried to clumsily shoehorn it into the prompt.
And since Hivemind is trying to sign writers, it makes sense that they would want people who can write faster than I can. And there are certainly some people cranking out words for this contest. I'm jealous. Though I suppose there are probably a few who had a work done or nearly done and happened to fit the prompt.
In 2023, I tried to have a few entries already partially written so I could get a head start, but none of them fit the prompt at all. So I didn't try that this year but I should have, since I had multiple ideas that would have fit. Still kinda kicking myself for not going with one of the simpler ones. Maybe the only contest winning move for me is to go for a simpler story so it doesn't feel cramped in 25k-35k words.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Thank you for the feedback and the kind words. I'm glad you found it snappy and fun to read. Thanks for reading!
