In a heat with thirty or so other writers, I scored fifth place for the NYCMidnight Short Story Challenge! This means I get to move on to the second round. I’ll be given all new prompts (genre, location, subject) to try again to advance to the third round.

The story that won was a romantic comedy about a girl who has trouble in the dating world. Her friend convinces her to try online dating and she thinks it’s a bust, only to have a love interest appear during an unexpected time. Reads like every other rom-com in the world, right? Truth is, it’s really hard to write a new twist to this genre. Subjects is love thirsty, silly things occur, subject finds love, the end. Rinse repeat, am I right? Hell yes, it’s the same boring crap every time. I hate this genre!

I had to think about what would draw attention. The answer? Vagina jokes and crude humor seemed to please the judges. My main character is a chunky gal just looking for some love, but she’s self-conscious. Her best friend encourages her to date, and the off the wall raunchy banter makes the story in my opinion. I have to thank my sister and my friends for making me realize my everyday commentary is pretty funny and I should embrace it.

In case you missed Eggplant, my short story for the contest, you can still check it out. Though in due time it will disappear from the site because I might enter it in somewhere else for publication.

I will panic about Round 2 once the prompts are in my inbox. In the meantime, I’m still working on Baltimore Zombies. Guess what? I just figured out how it all ends! Duh duh duuuhhhhhh!

Fingers to keyboard, gitty up!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash