In the last blog post, I mentioned that I had started work on rewriting a short flash piece of fiction that I recently wrote for a contest. The rules of the contest were that it had to be no more than 1000 words (including title and notes), it had to be set in a city in the year 2099, and it had to deal with people and nature.
So, I wrote my story. And then I cut it and cut it and cut it some more until it fit within the guidelines and I felt I could submit. I knew the story still needed more, but there wasn't any room for more, and by then I had run out of time, so I had to leave it the way it was and send it in.
Learning that my story, which I had titled "Regrowth", didn't make it past the first round of judging was quite saddening. With well over 1200 submissions to the contest, the odds definitely weren't in my favor, but I still worked hard on it and very much wanted to see it succeed. Not to mention that the prizes for winning 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place were very nice prizes ($3,000, $1500, and $500, respectively).
Now, however, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with the story. So I set out to try fleshing out the character arc a bit more and adding some more world building elements. Fun, right?
What ended up happening, instead, was an entirely new world was born than I could have imagined. It's becoming so vast and involved, what I plan to do is, instead of just one story or novel, I'm going to write a bunch of different short stories set within the world. The first one will be "The Last Grove", which is the title I've picked for the rewrite.
Be on the lookout for "Regrowth" over the next few days, as I would like to share the original story that has now become my inspiration for this new world I have created. Once I've done a bit more brainstorming I will also share with all of you some of the details of this new world.
I also need to do my best not to get distracted from my other work. Starting something new is exciting and energizing, but I still need to finish "Jophi's Journey" so that story can be concluded and I can start working on putting the chapters together into an eBook. And I still have a lot of work to do on many other stories as well. So many stories to tell and not enough time to do it!
