Travel Envy
I just spent a year participating in a challenge inspired by a short story master – Ray Bradbury. Essentially his thoughts were that it’s next to impossible for a working writer to produce 52 terrible short stories in a row that they are unhappy with. There were other components to it, however this was the part that caught my attention. So 52 weeks later I have 31 short stories in varying stages on my laptop and newfound confidence that yes, it’s possible to produce a decent short story a week, and yes, of the short stories I produced, there’s at least one in there that I’m proud to have my name attached to.
So now that it’s over, I find myself wondering what’s next. What other challenges can I set for myself to produce over the next year. The next year will be more focussed on a novel in the works, but short stories are a great way to tell the niggling ideas that lurk around in my head until I let them out to play. There’s an infinite number of topics to choose from, and that in a way makes it more difficult. What to pick when there’s too many choices?
Introducing the evocations challenge. Twelve months, twelve feelings or states to evoke in story form. Each story needs to be min 500 max 5000 words and evoke the state or emotion of the month. Some are deceptively simple. Some will require a lot more. Either way, a year from now there will be a catalogue of emotions and states sitting here to be unleashed upon the world.
So… diving right in, the challenge for November is: Envy. Envy (Verb) is defined as a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.). Let’s see just how envious we can be.
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