Contests & Blog Updates

Happy (very belated) Chinese New Year! 🎉🎊🎆🐕

Dogs are finally getting the recognition they deserve (again). But what about dogs under the couch/car/table? Underdogs too shall be recognized. 🐶👑 Ha. Ha ha? 🐾 (I need some fluff cuddling…)

Real life has been… interesting of late, to put it mildly, and one of the several reasons for my lack of updates (breakdowns don’t usually help creativity).

Let me start with some contest updates!

I unfortunately didn’t make it as a finalist for Screencraft‘s Cinematic Short Story Contest, but I’m still proud to have made it as far as semifinalist! Live and learn. 😊 You can check out the winners here.

As for the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge, I received Honorable Mention, but will not be progressing to Round 2. As disappointed as a part of me is, I’m also secretly glad because the timing would have been inconvenient. Real life priorities! What have I become… I would encourage you to check out the 125 prompts and many, many intriguing synopsis based on those prompts just for funsies, and/or for inspiration!

Now for some blog updates…

I made a banner for my blog because I wanted something until I can create (or get help creating) what I think I want. I’m quite pleased with the end result (yay Canva). 🙃

Some of you might know, but I also have a Twitter account now! For which I also made a banner, because– fun. You can follow me @JusteWriting (see what I did there? 🤭), even though I don’t yet tweet nearly as often as any bird. 🐦 #trying?

I have two new library pages up! They’re for both the aforementioned stories, Out of the Box and Wrong Place Right Time respectively. However, you might notice actual stories are missing, and fret not! Completely intentional. I’ve taken down the few I had up for several reasons, partly because I do hope to publish them (“properly”) one day, but mostly because most contests don’t want previously published stories! Which is fair enough. Plus, I’m never really done editing them, so, to shush the perfectionist, it made sense.

I think that about settles it for the news front. Loads of changes coming in about a month (😬😨😣), at least, I’m about 93.75% sure. (Did you know 72.3% of statistics are made up on the spot?) I’ll keep you appraised… In the meantime, I’ll aim to share more DIY MFA posts!

Thanks for reading, and Happy Easter! 🐇 I get to enjoy a nice 4 day weekend without the stress of hashing out a new story now, so if you need me, I’ll be by the beach, sipping a mojito (not).

Peace out,
Mel