So… how is it going? #StoryADayMay, I mean…

I must say that…well. I suppose you could say that technically speaking, having completed my fifteenth story last night,  I’m still on my chosen course of at least three stories a week.

And that’s good.

But… but.

I remember reading somewhere in Julie Duffy’s explanations that around halfway a loss of momentum was to be expected – and that’s exactly what has happened. Or perhaps not quite exactly, considering.

I think I told you that, right on the eve of beginning the challenge, another project resurfaced rather unexpectedly – and not to play but meaning business, armed with deadlines and promise, requiring immediate attention… I didn’t want to give up StoryADay, though, and decided to try and juggle the two things – in part to see whether I could.

And at first it seemed that I could. Daytime writing hours were devoted to RtM, while in the evening I would work on the daily story… It went all very well as long as the RtM work was a matter of plotting and planning and additional research. I drafted a new tiny story almost every night, and was reasonably happy with my growing collection of first draft.

And then… and then I began to actually write RtM. Putting words on screen, finding my legs again with that particular story and characters… you know how it is. And I began to miss a daily story here and there – and the more I found my flow with RtM, the less I felt like writing flash-fiction at night. And, perhaps worse, the less satisfied I was with what I did write at night when soldiering through.

Because soldier through I did, although not half as regularly and pleasantly as before. “Oh yes – the tiny story,” I’d sigh, come night – and set down to work, mostly, and once or twice strayed from my chosen characters and setting to entice myself and not miss out… if only as a matter of discipline, you see. Which is not to say it all and entirely went pear-shaped: last night’s story, for instance, while probably nothing I’ll end up using, was both pertinent and a pleasure to write.

Oh well, I have every intention of concluding what I’ve started, and worry later at what I’ll have, or haven’t, achieved with the challenge. I am surely left with a question: was this loss of momentum and enthusiasm only due to RtM claiming my full attention, or would it have happened in some form, even without RtM’s encroaching ways?

The only way to know, I guess, will be to do StoryADay again next May – perhaps without competing projects, if at all possible?