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From "Idea" to "Published Story" in 24 Hours

On Friday 18th November 2011 I managed to do something that I never thought possible.

Whilst walking to work I was listening to an old Level 42 album and pondering a new idea I had for a story. When I got to the office, to preserve the idea, I opened up Google Docs and jotted down a couple of sentences.

At lunchtime I re-read my notes and decided to turn it into a story. By the time I'd written about 400 words I realised that this would easily work as a 600 word story for 365tomorrows.com, who publish a daily flash-fiction piece in the sci-fi genre.

The last time I submitted something to 365tomorrows they rejected it weeks later, on the grounds that there was no narrative to the story (the story was written in pure dialogue).

Once this new story was completed I made two changes. I changed the gender of one character and the name of another. By the end of the day I had submitted the story, entitled "Freedom Someday" to 365tomorrows.

The usual turnaround response time for a story submitted to 365tomorrows is 4-6 weeks.

On Saturday morning, the next day, 365tomorrows had emailed me back to accept it, saying that the story was fantastic, and would be published on their website as the piece for Monday 21st November. Naturally I was thrilled!

So, within the space of 24 hours I'd had an idea for a fiction story, which I converted to a set of notes, which I converted into a 600 word story, which I submitted to an online publishing entity, and had it accepted; an achievement symptomatic of the Internet Age.

www.365tomorrows.com
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Comments

  1. Dina Roberts 9 February 2012 at 18:49

    I'm impressed you were able to tell a decent story with the short amount of time allotted.

    The urgency in your voice works well with the story.

    You vaguely remind me of Michael Keaton.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Huw Langridge10 February 2012 at 17:05

    Thanks for the comment Dina. In fact, the urgency in my voice was mostly from trying to get the story across in two minutes!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous8 June 2012 at 05:53

    Might be time to write something else and submit to 365!

    ReplyDelete

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