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February 7 Writing Time: 0h Word Count: 0 words While I’ve been preparing for this short story contest, the deadline for a six-page paper has been rapidly approaching. Who knew? That paper was due tonight, so I didn’t have any time to write fiction. Conclusion: my professor is trying to crush my dreams.

Writing Time: 2.5hr Word Count: N/A (editing day) Worked on Alice & Harry (now under consideration for a new name…). I changed a lot. The story is still not quite where it needs to be yet.

Writing Time: 2.5h Word Count: N/A (editing day) Something about “Alice & Harry” feels incredibly sensitive — just one sentence or word in the wrong place seems to throw the entire story out of alignment. Maybe that’s because this story is particularly personal for me, and maybe it’s because I’ve already revised it dozens of…

Writing Time: 2h Word Count: N/A (editing day) I’m trying to choose a story to submit to the ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest on February 8th. Today I went back and revised a story I wrote six months ago, “Alice & Harry.” I intended to make simple changes to the final few paragraphs, but…

Writing Time: 1.5h Word Count: 1524 I worked on “Beyond the Walls” on our drive home from Grand Junction, CO. We passed through a narrow pass during a heavy snowstorm — my focus oscillated between writing to watching the road and hoping we wouldn’t careen off the side of the mountain.

Writing Time: 1h Word Count: 454  After driving two hundred miles and five hours from Colorado Springs, playing a hockey game against Colorado Mesa University (we won 3-2), and eating Dominos in the lobby of a Hampton Inn (their cheesy bread is incredible), I sat at a desk in my motel room and tried to…

Writing Time: 3h Word Count: 1165 Mira liked the six page version of our sketch; I liked the four page one. After an hour, we managed to settle on a five page edition that’s probably (hopefully) better than both of the other ones. I want to finish “Beyond the Walls” by February 8 — I’d…

I would like to take this opportunity to state my opinion that group projects should be against the law. On an unrelated note, my writing time today was consumed by the necessity of thoroughly editing a paper written by myself and three peers. Needless to say, I’m heartbroken. But I have to wake up at…

Writing Time: 1h Word Count: 447 All this time, I’ve been writing “Beyond the Walls” with only a loose idea of what is at the heart of the story — what is causing a series of strange events to happen, and what battle my hero will ultimately have to fight at the end of his…

Writing Time: 1h Word Count: N/A (editing day) I didn’t know how to move forward with my novel today, so I went backwards, instead. I removed five pages and rearranged several others. It hurts a little bit to remove days worth of work, but the restructuring is giving me a better sense of where to…