Competitions and Short Story Season

Good news on the edit-for-the-competition front: got the manuscript down below the 80,000 wordcount limit and only lost one chapter, leaving the finished version #2 ending exactly where it was originally intended to end and leaving me already one completed chapter into Book 2 - and I'm actually really happy with the final version of Witherstone, so that can't be bad!

(-and thanks to A. J. Duggan for such helpful advice & support on the To Edit or Not To Edit question, Prince of Denmark, eat yer heart out. Oh yes, you already did.)

Managed to get it in the post in plenty of time before the competition deadline too, so all-in-all, a job well done.

So now what? I'm already off to a cracking start with Book 2, and keen to get on with that now to stave off the prospective silence emanating from prospective publishers and competition judges, but I'm also enjoying getting involved with the forthcoming Short Story Season (short stories being my main focal point before I wrote the book) and have crazily replied to a fabulous offer from poet Max Wallis to apply for a slot on his somethingeveryday site...
As this will involve writing er, something every day, and this is what I try to do anyway, it seemed like a great idea at the time I said yay, but the question I'm now raising with myself is whether that something I pen every day is something I'm happy to share with at least 5,000 people (Max's site has that many followers and has received 60,000+ hits in just 8 months...) and I think the answer is probably no.

So, motivated by Max, I'm now aiming to write one GOOD short story every week for Short Story Season - kicking off with the week of 16th November when the Lancashire Writing Hub are running a Word Soup Short Story Night and publicising their Short Story Competition, and typing furiously right through National Short Story Week 22nd-28th November, and rounding off with National Short Story Day on 21st December when LWH will be publishing the winning story from their competition on their website as part of a collaborative Short Story Day project with Comma Press, Flambard Press, Iron Press, Route Publishing, Cadaverine and Mslexia.

By my reckoning, I should end up with 6 good short stories under my pen by 21st December. Well, 6 short stories, anyway.

So, am I planning to send off one of these Short Stories to the fab Lancashire Writing Hub Short Story Competition?
No.
Why not? Because I'm one of the judges, groan...

Some really good news on the topic of writing competitions though is that my talented daughter was a runner-up in a recent Bloomsbury Short Story Competition, so at least someone in the house can write GOOD Short Stories! Congrats HB, for a job well done! ;o)

Word Soup Short Story Night The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP;

Lancs Writing Hub Short Story Competition deadline 10th December, winner published online 21st December;

National Short Story Week 22nd-28th November,

National Short Story Day website & facebook page.