Sunday was Father’s Day and I had up to 2 stories to write and a blog post. One of the stories, THE KNIGHT OF WANDS, had to be in by midnight Sunday. Fortunately we’re around 8 hours ahead of Pacific/Mountain daylight time. That’s an entire working day. However, it was the one due on Monday that wanted to be written.
We did all the usual Sunday morning stuff and I was just getting in the bath when Son #1 and his partner and their doggy arrived. Their little dog is quite a nervous thing and this was the first time I’d be meeting her. So I rushed through my bath and was able to have some happy bonding time with her. We took them out to see the camper van, as they’d not seen it yet, and then they headed off.
Son #2 and his partner and their doggy weren’t due for a couple of hours, so we had something to eat and then went out to get food for the garden birds. When we got back from there, I finally got some words down for THE KNIGHT OF WANDS. I started a new Scrivener file for the suit of wands short stories and rattled out the basic idea for the story.
I took a break, started today’s blog post, and then went back to it. I set the word-count target to 7,000 maximum and set it up to compile in manuscript short story format. The cricket was on the telly, the commentary of which is white noise to me. But the adverts distracted me every time they came on. I lasted as long as I could before succumbing to earphones.
I was doing really well and in the flow when our second lot of visitors arrived, and we spent the next 2½ hours having a good old chat and putting the world to rights. We also had some fun playing with the dog, who’s an absolute nutcase in our garden. He loves it and spends almost his entire visit zooming around. He also loves going in through one door and out through another in a full circuit.
When they dragged themselves away, I went back to my writing while the poet made tea. We had toad in the hole with veg and gravy and didn’t have any room for pudding. He watched the England game on the telly while I went back to work.
In the end, I wrote 4,600 words, starting and finishing the story in one day, from basic idea to submission – and probably rejection, as it was a bit rushed. But my objective was achieved. At the end of it I had a final-ish product that can only be worked on and improved. It was almost 1am Monday morning, but that was still 7 hours before deadline. Yay!
But gosh, what a busy weekend we had! It was great to see the kids and the dogs. And, of course, I enjoyed that feeling of achievement at having done something.
Well done, doing the entire story in a day! And having fun with the family. Sounds like an all around great weekend.
The story felt like a massive achievement!